Tut gut, das zu lesen, dafür setzen sich die Professor:innen der Pharmazie schon länger ein. Der Entwurf liegt auf dem Tisch, alle Betroffenen haben diskutiert - jetzt ist "die Politik" am Zug...

Stay tuned for more details about this at the #ICTC13! 😁

Would be cool if you could add me as well. Thanks

Some books were easier to throw away, though… #globukalypse

If you are interested in more details about aetokthonostatin, please read the paper and the extensive supporting materials (sorry, not immediately OA, I try to do better in the future… :) ). And while A. hydrillicola is nasty, it is still beautiful, isn’t it? ;-) 11/11

This bacterium is now known to produce two very different but very potent toxins, making it a potential threat also for human health. Monitoring of the cyanobacterium and its toxins is strongly recommended. 10/

This project was much more straight-forward than our last project with A. hydrillicola, but the findings may be rather troubling: In contrast to all other known dolastatin-producers, which are marine cyanobacteria, A. hydrillicola thrives in freshwater – also in drinking water reservoirs. 9/

A. hydrillicola is the first cultured cyanobacterium producing dolastatin derivatives, which allowed uncovering biosynthetic gene clusters of this compound family in collaboration with Jan Mareš from the Biology Centre of the #CzechAcademyOfSciences. 8/

We confirmed that AEST impacts microtubule dynamics similarly to dolastatin 10 and showed that it inhibits reproduction of the nematode C. elegans. Interestingly, although dolastatins derivatives are used in the clinic, nothing has been known about their biosynthesis. 7/

Aetokthono- is obvious, but why -statins? They are chemically closely related to the dolastatins. Dolastatins are among the best-known cyanobacterial #NaturalProducts, derivatives of them are exploited as warheads in antibody-drug conjugates used to treat cancer. 6/

Thus, there had to be another compound in the extract with higher cytotoxicity than AETX – which sparked our interest… :-) In the resulting publication, we present the isolation, structure elucidation, bioactivity, and biosynthesis of the aetokthonostatins (#AEST). 5/

However, after we had finally isolated AETX, we found to our surprise that a crude A. hydrillicola extract was much more cytotoxic than a corresponding amount of pure AETX. Also, extracts that did not contain any AETX were still cytotoxic. 4/

10 years ago, searching for the toxin causing vacuolar myelinopathy, we observed that extracts of the cyanobacterium A. hydrillicola were strongly cytotoxic. This motivated us to search for the VM toxin in the cyanobacterium, as we suspected it to be responsible for the observed cytotoxicity. 3/

Remember aetokthonotoxin (AETX), the “eagle-killer #cyanotoxin” that we discovered to kill e.g. bald eagles (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... )? A. hydrillicola not only produces #AETX. 2/