Abstract
WE have isolated a new group of ansamycin antibiotics with potent antitumour activity, from a fermentation broth of Nocardia sp. No. C-15003 (N-l) and have named it ansamitocin. Structures of ansamitocin were found to be similar to maytansine and related maytansinoids obtained from plant sources by Kupchan et al.1–4 and Wani et al.5. These comounds have strong antitumour activities, but development of production would be difficult, because plants containing maytansinoids are only harvested in tropical areas and their content in the plants is extremely low. Some attempts have been made to find a maytansinoid-producing microorganism6, but no success has been reported. We report here the microbial production, isolation and structural elucidation of these antibiotics and their antitumour activities against several experimental tumours in mice.
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References
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HIGASHIDE, E., ASAI, M., OOTSU, K. et al. Ansamitocin, a group of novel maytansinoid antibiotics with antitumour properties from Nocardia. Nature 270, 721–722 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1038/270721a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/270721a0
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