Pharmacological and Therapeutic Potential of Beauvericin: A Short Review

Abstract

An entomopathogenic fungus, Beauveria spp. has been known to have numerous pharmacological and therapeutic implications, especially, in terms of human health making it a suitable for ethnopharmacological use. Beauvericin is a cyclic hexadepsipeptide mycotoxin, a novel bio-metabolite derived from this fungus, exhibiting a very potent anticancer, cytotoxic activities, antiplatelet aggregation and antimicrobial activities. The current review discusses the therapeutic potential of beauvericin including pharmacological and biological activities which will certainly draw the attention of scientific community to improve the production of beauvericin for its use in medical fields.

Beauveria bassiana secondary metabolites: a review inside their production systems, biosynthesis, and bioactivities

“…After analyzing the production conditions and the types of pigments produced by B. bassiana, the chemical characteristics of the metabolites are shown in Table 2. (Wat et al, 1977) Beauvericin (3S,6R,9S,12R,15S,18R)-3,9,15-tribenzyl-4,10,16trimethyl-6,12,18tri(propan-2-yl)-1,7,13trioxa-4,10,16triazacyclooctadecane-2,5,8,11,14,17-hexone C45H57N3O9 783.9 g/mol (Sood et al, 2017)…”

“…For the synthesis of beauvericin via fermentation process it is necessary the presence of glucose as main carbon source for fungal growth. Nevertheless, peptone and NaNO3 are required as nitrogen sources (Sood et al, 2017). The biosynthesis of beauvericin is carried out by the action of beauvericin synthetase, an enzyme with molecular mass of 250 kDa (Peters et al, 1983).…”

“…The cyclic ester of a trimer of (2r)-2-hydroxy-3-methylbutanoyl-nmethyl-l-phenylalanine is synthetized by the non-ribosomal enzyme peptide synthetase. As first step, the aminoacids L-phenylalanine and valine needs a transamination reaction accepting nitrogen from any aminoacids (Sood et al,2017).…”

Mycotoxins in Foods and Indoor Air: Their Attendant Diseases and Modes of Injury on Biological and Human Systems

“…Beavericin closely resembles the eniatin antibiotics, however, they seem to differ in target (Wang and Xu, 2012). Unlike penicillins and nephrotoxic glycopeptides (eniatin antibiotics) which are cell membrane or cell wall inhibitors, beauvericin targets cell organelles, nucleus and enzymes (Sood et al, 2017). This compound is a specific cholesterol acyltransferase inhibitor.…”

“…Tests with bacteria showed that nephrotoxic glycopeptides inhibit the synthesis of cell walls and peptidoglycan synthesis by infringing the addition of new amino acid units to it. The mechanism of this action is reported to involve binding to acyl-D-alanyl-D-alanine terminals of growing peptide chain, inactivating the enzyme transpeptidase and thus prevents further elongation and cross linking of peptiglycan matrix in bacteria (www.medweb (Logrieco et al, 1998;Sood et al, 2017). Beavericin closely resembles the eniatin antibiotics, however, they seem to differ in target (Wang and Xu, 2012).…”