Dereplication and Prioritization of Natural Product Extracts for Antifungal Drug Discovery

Fowler, Kara (2014) Dereplication and Prioritization of Natural Product Extracts for Antifungal Drug Discovery. Undergraduate thesis, under the direction of Melissa Jacob from National Center for Natural Products Research, University of Mississippi.

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Abstract

The prevalence of opportunistic fungal infections in hospital settings are at alarming rates. Through technological advances in natural product research, plants have become a useful source for antifungal drug discovery. More samples can be screened at once, fractionated in less time, and biologically tested at smaller quantities. However, isolating antifungal compounds from these plant extracts and determining their specific chemical makeup can still take up a significant amount of time. Therefore, this thesis presents a prioritization technique to prevent the need to isolate every compound within an active fraction. With the guidance of literature research on the genus and species of each plant sample coupled with the biological activity data collected on each sample, plant extracts can be prioritized for isolation efforts or thrown out completely if found uninteresting. This method of prioritization also fuels dereplication efforts by preventing researchers from spending time and resources on plants that have already been worked on. Plants that have had little work done on them and that have highly active fractions will lead to the discovery of novel antifungal drugs.

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