Lab Azul USP | Microbial NP Biotechnology

Exploring the power of (bio)diversity.

The Laboratory of Microbial Natural Products Biotechnology, a.k.a. Lab Azul, is interested in identifying and characterizing bioactive compounds from the Brazilian biodiversity.

We investigate the chemistry of talented microbes, such as #cyanobacteria, as a source of natural products with potential use as pharmaceuticals. Our multidisciplinary and collaborative research combines bioprospection with #metabolomics and #genomics aiming at enhancing natural product drug discovery. It includes aspects of #naturalproductschemistry #pharmacognosy #chemicalbiology #biotechnology #pharmacology and #microbiology.

Research

From antibiotic-resistant infections to untreatable cancers, new drugs are a continuous demand.

For an efficient drug discovery process, it is key to screen the most relevant chemical space. Natural products have long been recognized as an important source of therapeutic agents. Natural product-inspired compounds, represent more than 65% of current small-molecule drugs.

At the Lab Azul, we aim at enhancing drug discovery with biodiversity and technology.

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Bioprospecting cyanobacteria for natural products

Cyanobacteria are a taxonomically diverse phylum of microorganisms known to produce secondary metabolites with biotechnological potential. The chemistry of cyanobacteria from the Brazilian biodiversity remains largely underexplored, representing a promising source of unprecedented scaffolds. We are developing and screening a pre-fractionated library of cyanobacterial natural products for anticancer, antibiotic, and antiparasitic activities.

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Metabolomics and genomics applied to microbial natural products

Omics technologies combined with information solutions have opened new frontiers in natural products research. We apply metabolomics and genomics for sample prioritization, preliminary dereplication, compound identification, large-scale comparative analyses, etc.