Microbial Bioconversion: A Regio-specific Method for Novel Drug Design and Toxicological Study of Metabolites

Abstract

The methods of chemical structural alteration of small organic molecules by using microbes (fungi, bacteria, yeast, etc.) are gaining tremendous attention to obtain structurally novel and therapeutically potential leads. The regiospecific mild environmental friendly reaction conditions with the ability of novel chemical structural modification in compounds categorize this technique; a distinguished and unique way to obtain medicinally important drugs and their in vivo mimic metabolites with costeffective and timely manner. This review article shortly addresses the immense pharmaceutical importance of microbial transformation methods in drug designing and development as well as the role of CYP450 enzymes in fungi to obtain in vivo drug metabolites for toxicological studies.

Keywords: CYP450 enzymes; Microbial bioconversion; drug metabolites; novel drugs; pharmaceutical leads; regiospecificity..