New semi-automated method for the creation of a microbial fraction collection developed at Fundación MEDINA

Recently, several international scientific initiatives have promoted the production of highly diverse new libraries to support current research of pharmaceutical products. However, because just few of the initiatives are successful, there is always a constant need for more chemical diversity. The newly endowed Fundación MEDINA (Fundación Centro de Excelencia en Investigación de Medicamentos Innovadores en Andalucía, Spain) is focusing much of its efforts on new drug discovery from unexplored Natural Product sources. The Fundación Medina's Natural Products Collection covers an uncommonly broad chemical space resulting from a variety of fermentation products prepared through new processes optimized for each type of microbial source. In addition, a collection of known compounds is on hand with which to quickly characterize new bioassays as well as to determine any assay interferences or other shortcomings in rapid and cost-effective fashion. assay interferences or other shortcomings in rapid and cost-effective fashion. We will report here several new semi-automated methodologies of innovative automated extraction and purification techniques, for the generation of new Natural Product collections by using: Different Filamentous fungi, Actinomycetes and other bacteria as source of secondary metabolites Different extraction protocols based on nature of starting materials (resin pre-adsorption of very dilute, water y broths; two-phase solvent extractions for lipid fungal strains and aqueous-based extracts for many actinomycetes) Automated Fractionation protocols tailor-made for the type of starting material (chromatography on highly retentive resins, gel filtration, regular reverse-phase separations) – Bi-dimensional Fractionation Management making use of different physiochemical properties.