A Deep Dive into Aquatic Microbial Consortia for Drug Discovery

Micro-algae are prolific sources of novel secondary metabolites as evidenced by the isolation of hundreds of structurally unique compounds demonstrating a host of potent biological activities.  Owing to limitations in the quantity of biomass available through conventional collection methods or laboratory culture, these investigations have generally been limited to the most abundant metabolites.  At Biosortia, we have developed harvesting technologies that enable collection and concentration of more than a metric ton of wet micro algal biomass in a single batch.  The biomass obtained in this process retains the cellular integrity of the captured organisms that include microphytes as well as cyanobacteria, actinomycetes, other bacteria and fungi constituting the consortium.  High-resolution refining of the secondary metabolites produced within the consortia has been used to create screening libraries of simplified mixtures for drug discovery.  These libraries have been evaluated by several academic and industrial groups with programs in cancer, infectious diseases, and metabolic disorders, as well as for agro-chemical applications.  This presentation will provide an overview of our process and highlight our recent screening results and discoveries.