Anticancer compounds derived from fungal endophytes: their importance and future challenges.

Endophytic fungi or endophytes exist widely inside the healthy tissues of living plants, and are important components of plant micro-ecosystems Over the long period of evolution, some co-existing endophytes and their host plants have established a special relationship with one and another, which can significantly influence the formation of metabolic products in plants, then affect quality and quantity of crude drugs derived from medicinal plants This paper will focus on the increasing knowledge of relationships between endophytic fungi and medicinal plants through reviewing of published research data obtained from the last 30 years The analytical results indicate that the distribution and population structure of endophytes can be considerably affected by factors, such as the genetic background, age, and environmental conditions of their hosts On the other hand, the endophytic fungi can also confer profound impacts on their host plants by enhancing their growth, increasing their fitness, strengthening their tolerances to abiotic and biotic stresses, and promoting their accumulation of secondary metabolites All the changes are very important for the production of bioactive components in their hosts Hence, it is essential to understand such relationships between endophytic fungi and their host medicinal plants Such knowledge can be well exploited and applied for the production of better and more drugs from medicinal plants

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A Friendly Relationship between Endophytic Fungi and Medicinal Plants: A Systematic Review.

Plant endophytic fungi are an important and novel resource of natural bioactive compounds with their potential applications in agriculture, medicine and food industry In the past two decades, many valuable bioactive compounds with antimicrobial, insecticidal, cytotoxic, and anticancer activities have been successfully discovered from endophytic fungi During the long period of co-evolution, a friendly relationship was formed between each endophyte and its host plant Some endophytes have the ability to produce the same or similar bioactive compounds as those originated from their host plants This review mainly deals with the research progress on endophytic fungi for producing plant-derived bioactive compounds such as paclitaxel, podophyllotoxin, camptothecine, vinblastine, hypericin, and diosgenin The relations between endophytic fungi and their host plants, biological activities and action mechanisms of these compounds from endophytic fungi, some available strategies for efficiently promoting production of these bioactive compounds, as well as their potential applications in the future will also be discussed It is beneficial for us to better understand and take advantage of plant endophytic fungi

Plant-derived bioactive compounds produced by endophytic fungi.

Endophytes are microorganisms that reside asymptomatically in the tissues of higher plants and are a promising source of novel organic natural metabolites exhibiting a variety of biological activities. The laboratory of Bioaromas (Unicamp, Brazil) develops research in biotransformation processes and functional evaluation of natural products. With the intent to provide subsidies for studies on endophytic microbes related to areas cited before, this paper focuses particularly on the role of endophytes on the production of anticancer, antimicrobial, and antioxidant compounds and includes examples that illustrate their potential for human use. It also describes biotransformation as an auspicious method to obtain novel bioactive compounds from microbes. Biotransformation allows the production of regio- and stereoselective compounds under mild conditions that can be labeled as “natural,” as discussed in this paper.

/pdf/the-use-of-endophytes-to-obtain-bioactive-compounds-and-gyad58ck5v.pdf

The use of endophytes to obtain bioactive compounds and their application in biotransformation process.

This review describes examples of naturally occurring bioactive compounds obtained from fungal endophytes from various host plants The main topics addressed are sources, identification, biological

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1934578X0900401114

Chemical and functional diversity of natural products from plant associated endophytic fungi.

Terminalia arjuna is a medicinal plant (the arjun tree) that possesses anticancer activity. An endophytic fungus, Pestalotiopsis terminaliae, was isolated from the fresh healthy leaves of this tree and was screened for the production of taxol, an anticancer drug, in artificial culture medium. The taxol produced was analysed chromatographically and spectrometrically. The amount of taxol produced by the fungus was found to be 211.1 microg/litre. This was sufficient for the fungus to be considered as a potential source material for improvement, by engineering, the production of taxol. The fungal taxol extracted from an organic extract of the fungal culture had strong cytotoxic activity towards BT220, H116, Int 407, HL 251 and HLK 210 human cancer cells in vitro when tested using an apoptosis assay.

Venkatraman Gangadevi

Papers

Taxol production by Pestalotiopsis terminaliae, an endophytic fungus of Terminalia arjuna (arjun tree).