Planta Med 2015; 81 - PM_234
DOI: 10.1055/s-0035-1565611

High throughput screening of microbial biodiversity for the discovery of novel cosmeceutical agents

K Georgousaki 1, N DePedro 2, AM Chinchilla 3, N Aliagiannis 1, F Vicente 2, P de Castro 3, S Fotinos 4, O Genilloud 2, N Fokialakis 1
  • 1Department of Pharmacognosy and Natural Products Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Athens, 15771, Athens, Greece
  • 2Fundación MEDINA, Av. Del Conocimiento 34, 18016 Armilla, Granada, Spain
  • 3PROTEOS Biotech, 14 Almansa St, 02006, Albacete, Spain
  • 4Lavipharm SA, Agias Marinas, 19002, Paiania Attica, Greece

MICROSMETICS, is an EU funded project aiming to discover and bring to development innovative products in the area of anti-ageing cosmeceuticals, originating from microbial biodiversity and using emerging and state of the art technologies in the field of biotechnology, natural products chemistry and applied microbiology.

In the frame of MICROSMETICS more than 110 potential candidate strains (fungi and actinomycetes) identified from a Rational Drug Design Tool (using a functional prediction model, virtual screening and similarity search) were selected to be studied. Approximately 1100 extracts have been generated and evaluated for their biological activity. A broad spectrum of bioassays and novel analytical approaches are being incorporated for the evaluation of anti-ageing, more specifically anti-oxidant, skin-protecting, and skin-whitening activity of all derived products. For the evaluation of antioxidant activity the DPPH and ABTS assays were used. Skin-protecting was evaluated by measuring spectrophotometrically the inhibitory properties of samples against enzymes which are related to the elasticity and moisture of the skin (elastase collagenase, and hyaluronidase). The skin whitening activities were determined by the tyrosinase assay, using L-DOPA as substrate. Finally for the safety of those extracts cytotoxicity was evaluated on A2058, CCD25sk, HepG2 cell lines by the MTT method. The results of the above bioassays showed that from the above extracts approximately 120 had significant activity in ABTS, 84 in DPPH, 65 in tyrosinase and 52 in the selected enzymes. All toxic extracts were eliminated and by the application of a consensus model, 100 extracts from the 1100 were selected as highly potent and have been submitted for LC-HRMS profiling, metabolomics analysis and dereplication.

Acknowledgment: This work has been financially supported by EU under the frame of MICROSMETICS project (FP7-PEOPLE-IAPP 2013, Grant agreement: 612276).