MyxoTech: harnessing the power of microbial evolutionary diversity

Myxobacteria (phylum Myxococcota) are environmentally distributed, Gram-negative bacteria described as prolific producers of bioactive secondary ("special") metabolites. These potently engage a variety of cellular mechanisms-of-action in pro- and eukaryotes. MyxoTech re-purposes the myxobacterial drug discovery platform technology developed at HZI-HIPS for commercial application in indication areas outside the institute"s core mission, infectious disease. Under license we access collections of myxobacterial isolates and associated know-how. Our first collection follows the conceptual framework established by Hoffmann et al. (2018) to maximize chemical diversity, hence discovery potential, as a function of taxonomic diversity. The collection comprises isolates from 21 genera, 119 operational taxonomic units (OTU) of myxobacteria, with 196 isolates genome-sequenced, cultivated, extracted and prefractionated for biological screening at third party labs. MyxoTech provides this collection preplated and assay-ready for convenient screening. Downstream activities such as activity-directed dereplication, preparation of neat compound samples and structure elucidation can be accessed as fee-for-service or collaboration. We are committed to contributing to discoveries in a number of application and indication areas including hematology/oncology, immunity and inflammation. We plan assay applications for cell aging, mitochondrial function as well as payloads with novel, differentiated mechanism-of-action. We also plan to venture into non-pharmaceutical applications and seek scientific dialogue on these topics with the VAAM conference attendants.