Natural Products from Actinobacteria as a Potential Source of New Therapies Against Colorectal Cancer: A Review

Abstract

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common, and deadly disease. Despite the improved knowledge on CRC heterogeneity and advances in the medical sciences, there is still an urgent need to cope with the challenges and side effects of common treatments for the disease. Natural products (NPs) have always been of interest for the development of new medicines. Actinobacteria are known to be prolific producers of a wide range of bioactive NPs, and scientific evidence highlights their important protective role against CRC. This review is a holistic picture on actinobacter-derived cytotoxic compounds against CRC that provides a good perspective for drug development and design in near future. This review also describes the chemical structure of 232 NPs presenting anti-CRC activity with the being majority of quinones, lactones, alkaloids, peptides, and glycosides. The study reveals that most of these NPs are derived from marine actinobacteria followed by terrestrial and endophytic actinobacteria, respectively. They are predominantly produced by Streptomyces, Micromonospors, Saliniospors and Actinomadura, respectively, in which Streptomyces, as the predominant contributor generating over 76% of compounds exclusively. Besides it provides a valuable snapshot of the chemical structure-activity relationship of compounds, highlighting the presence or absence of some specific atoms and chemical units in the structure of compounds can greatly influence their biological activities. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive review on natural actinobacterial compounds affecting different types of CRC. Our study reveals that the high diversity of actinobacterial strains and their NPs derivatives, described here provides a new perspective and direction for the production of new anti-CRC drugs and paves the way to innovation for drugs discovery in the future. The knowledge obtain from this review can help us to understand the pivotal application of actinobacteria in future drugs development.

Identification and antibacterial evaluation of endophytic actinobacteria from Luffa cylindrica

“…Currently, about 160 antibiotics are used in the treatment of human infections and in agricultural industry 12 . Actinobacteria are known to be prolific producers of a wide range of bioactive natural products (NPs), and scientific evidence highlights their important protective role against diseases like colorectal cancer (CRC) 13 and lung cancer 14 . Secondary metabolites of 17 Actinobacteria strains isolated from Antarctica had promising antitumor effects 15 .…”

Isolation and identification of endophytic actinobacteria from Citrullus colocynthis (L.) Schrad and their antibacterial properties

“…Microbial competition, nutritional status, and physical pressures from the natural habitat are all important factors in actinomycetes' development and antibiotic production [ 16 , 17 ]. Scientific literature evidenced that due to generating an unprecedented potential of bioactive compounds with diverse activities [ 18 ], actinobacteria have many pharmaceutical and medicinal functions [ 6 , 7 , 19 ]. This encourages researchers to search and screen under-explored or untapped habitats to isolate potential EA strains with antibacterial activities [ 20 , 21 ].…”

The role of intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet in cancer disease: can they replace the Mediterranean diet?

“…Species that were discovered to be more prevalent in cancer patients than in healthy individuals were largely those from the phyla Bacteroides and Proteobacteria , whereas those that were found to be lower were mostly those from the phyla Firmicutes and Actinobacteria (Zheng et al ., 2020). While Firmicutes stimulate the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) (Louis and Flint, 2017), Actinobacteria promote antitumor effects (Bahrami et al ., 2022). SCFA is formed via colonic fermentation of indigestible carbohydrates and has anti-inflammatory properties.…”