Exploring autophagy-inducing properties and safety of novel bacterial natural products in vitro and in vivo

Bacteria represent an exceptional source of natural products with potential clinical applications. Over the last 2 decades, bacterial genome mining has revealed a vast untapped reservoir of novel bioactive products. However, under laboratory conditions, many of these cryptic gene clusters are not expressed. This research project aims at activating the expression of silent and cryptic pathways in Streptomyces bacteria to discover novel medicines. The newly produced compounds will be identified, isolated and their chemical structures elucidated using analytical chemistry approaches. In view of developing compounds for clinical use, their cytotoxicity will be assessed using mammalian cell lines. The anticancer properties of cytotoxic molecules will be investigated further while non-cytotoxic compounds will be assessed for their activity in triggering autophagy in Drosophila. Mechanisms of action of promising candidates will also be investigated during this study.