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Enzymes that detoxify marine toxins

Potent microbial toxins found in shellfish are possible starting points for drug discovery, but analogues are needed for biological testing. Toxin-modification enzymes now suggest a new approach for producing these analogues.
  1. Monica E. McCallum

    1. Monica E. McCallum is in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.

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  2. Emily P. Balskus

    1. Emily P. Balskus is in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.

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There is an acute need for new medications to treat pain. Important sources of therapeutics for pain management and other human conditions are natural products — complex, biologically active small molecules made by living organisms. But compounds isolated directly from natural sources often do not have the optimal properties to be drugs. Therefore, a major challenge faced by those using natural products as leads for drug discovery is how to access a diverse range of closely related molecular structures for biological testing. This can be accomplished using chemical synthesis, but the complex structures of natural products often make that approach challenging.

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Nature 570, 315-316 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01742-1

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