Natural products discovery, genome mining and the NPDI collection

The non-profit research organization NPDI (Natural Products Discovery Institute) houses the former Merck natural products collection, which is available to all researchers in the scientific community, to screen for pharmaceutical, agricultural, cosmeceutical and nutritional agents. In close collaboration with Fundación MEDINA, the combined collection comprises over 200K extracts from plants and microbial fermentation samples. These extracts are backed up with reserve materials and the producing cultures. Recent screening of the NPDI collection for a number of uses has yielded hits from extracts, which, in 80% of the cases, have not been previously identified as biologically active. In addition, we have begun accumulating purified DNA preparations from our diverse actinomycete collection, and over 15,000 DNA samples are now available for genome mining. This poster will describe the collections, as well as terms under which researchers can access this productive resource through collaborations or fee-for-service arrangements.