Pathways

For thousands of years, natural products have always been an important source for drug discovery. Fungi, due to their unique and diverse secondary metabolic capabilities, have become a valuable resource for natural active molecules. Since the discovery of penicillin, natural products derived from fungi have demonstrated significant application value in areas such as anti-infection, anti-tumor, immune regulation, and metabolic disease research. A large number of clinical drugs, such as antibiotics, immunosuppressants, and lipid-lowering drugs, are derived from fungal metabolites or their structurally optimized derivatives.

MCE fungal-derived compound library contains 91 structurally diverse and bioactive fungal natural products and their derivatives. It can be widely applied in various research fields such as antibacterial, anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, immune regulation, epigenetics, and cell signaling pathways, providing high-quality tools for natural product drug development and high-throughput screening.

Natural products are an attractive source with varied structures that exhibit potent biological activities, and desirable pharmacological profiles. The core scaffold of a natural product can also provide a biologically validated framework upon which to display diverse functional groups. Inspired by bioactive natural products, natural product-like compounds, occupying the same chemical space, are ideally suited to explore and to facilitate understanding of biological pathways.

MCE 10K Natural Product-like Compound Library consists of 10,000 natural product-like compounds. Each compound has scaffold of natural products or Tanimoto coefficient >0.6 with natural products. The natural-likeness scoring of these compounds is >-2. What’s more, compounds in the library are drug-like and readily available for re-supply, making it a powerful tool for new drug research and development. It can be widely applied in high-throughput screening (HTS) and high-content screening (HCS).

Natural products are an attractive source with varied structures that exhibit potent biological activities, and desirable pharmacological profiles. The core scaffold of a natural product can also provide a biologically validated framework upon which to display diverse functional groups. Inspired by bioactive natural products, natural product-like compounds, occupying the same chemical space, are ideally suited to explore and to facilitate understanding of biological pathways.

MCE 5K Natural Product-like Compound Library consists of 4,813 natural product-like compounds. Each compound has scaffold of natural products or Tanimoto coefficient >0.6 with natural products. The natural-likeness scoring of these compounds is >-2. What’s more, compounds in the library are drug-like and readily available for re-supply, making it a powerful tool for new drug research and development. It can be widely applied in high-throughput screening (HTS) and high-content screening (HCS).

The TCA cycle (tricarboxylic acid cycle)—is also known as the Krebs cycle or the citric acid cycle (CAC). The TCA cycle is a series of chemical reactions that release stored energy through the oxidation of acetyl-CoA in carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.

For decades, the TCA cycle has been considered as the central pathway for cell oxidative phosphorylation to produce energy and biosynthesis. Research shows that TCA cycle is associated with many diseases, especially cancer. In colon carcinoma, liver cancer and other cancers, there are mutations that lead to the imbalance of TCA cycle metabolites, indicating that TCA cycle may be related to the occurrence of cancer. Understanding the role and molecular mechanism of TCA cycle in inhibiting or promoting cancer progression will promote the development of new metabolite-based cancer treatment methods in the future.

MCE supplies a unique collection of 25 key intermediates of the TCA cycle, which can be utilized for TCA-related research and metabolomics identification studies.

Cell death is a core biological process that maintains homeostasis in multicellular organisms, playing a dual role in life activities. On one hand, cell death participates in physiological processes such as cell renewal and damage repair through precise regulation; on the other hand, it actively eliminates damaged, infected, or cancerous cells, thereby blocking pathological progression and preserving organism health. Cell death not only ensures the normal development and growth regulation of organisms but is also closely associated with the occurrence and development of various diseases. Numerous studies have shown that specific types of programmed cell death play critical roles in disease progression, providing an important theoretical basis for developing novel therapeutic strategies by regulating cell death pathways.

MCE offers 23 types of commonly used cell death inhibitors, such as apoptosis, ferroptosis, pyroptosis, and cuproptosis, suitable for use as positive controls in the study of novel cell death mechanisms.

Vitamins are a category of trace organic compounds essential for maintaining normal physiological functions in living organisms. They are classified into fat-soluble and water-soluble vitamins. Fat-soluble vitamins play a role in maintaining vision, bone health, reproductive functions, and blood coagulation. Water-soluble vitamins are involved in energy metabolism, nervous system function, and cellular repair processes. Most vitamins cannot be synthesized by the organism and must be obtained through diet. In recent years, vitamins and their derivatives have become increasingly important in the field of drug development due to their extensive physiological activities. Additionally, vitamins and their derivatives can be used to construct research platforms for vitamin metabolism, which helps to delve into the metabolic pathways and dynamic changes of vitamins within the body and aids in identifying new biomarkers for certain diseases.

MCE included 136 vitamins and their derivatives, including Vitamin A, Vitamin B, Vitamin D, etc., which is a good tool for studying vitamin metabolism.

Pulmonary fibrosis (PF), also known as diffuse interstitial pulmonary fibrosis, is a very common end-stage manifestation of several diseases, including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), pulmonary hypertension, and scleroderma, characterised by excessive matrix deposition and destruction of the lung architecture, finally leading to respiratory insufficiency. PF has become a global disease with significantly increased incidence rate, and the most common form of pulmonary fibrosis is idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).

Lung fibrosis is a complex disease, a multitude of signal factors and signaling pathways is disrupted in this complex disease, such as TGF-β, Wnt, VEGF and PI3K–Akt. MCE offers a unique collection of 2,810 compounds with identified and potential anti-pulmonary fibrosis activity. MCE Anti-Pulmonary Fibrosis Compound Library is a useful tool for anti-pulmonary fibrosis drugs screening and other related research.

Metabolism is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. Metabolic pathways are enzyme-mediated biochemical reactions that lead to biosynthesis (anabolism) or breakdown (catabolism) of natural product small molecules within a cell or tissue. Acting as catalysts, enzymes are crucial to metabolism - they allow a reaction to proceed more rapidly - and they also allow the regulation of the rate of a metabolic reaction. Proteases are used throughout an organism for various metabolic processes. Proteases control a great variety of physiological processes that are critical for life, including the immune response, cell cycle, cell death, wound healing, food digestion, and protein and organelle recycling. Imbalances in metabolic activities have been found to be critical in a number of pathologies, such as cardiovascular diseases, inflammation, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases.

MCE designs a unique collection of 7,360 Metabolism/Protease-related small molecules that act as a useful tool for drug discovery of metabolism-related diseases.

DNA is prone to numerous forms of damage that can injure cells and impair fitness. Cells have developed an array of mechanisms to repair these injuries. Proliferating cells are especially vulnerable to DNA damage due to the added demands of cellular growth and division. Cell cycle checkpoints represent integral components of DNA repair that coordinate cooperation between the machinery of the cell cycle and several biochemical pathways that respond to damage and restore DNA structure. By delaying progression through the cell cycle, checkpoints provide more time for repair before the critical phases of DNA replication, when the genome is replicated, and of mitosis, when the genome is segregated. Loss or attenuation of checkpoint function may increase spontaneous and induced gene mutations and chromosomal aberrations by reducing the efficiency of DNA repair.

MCE owns a unique collection of 3,522 cell cycle/DNA damage-related compounds which can be used in the research of the same.

The majority of hypertensive patients have primary (or essential) hypertension, that is, hypertension in which secondary causes are not present. Management aims to control arterial pressure, prevent end-organ damage (cerebrovascular, cardiovascular, and renal), and reduce the risk of premature death.

Antihypertensive drugs may be divided into two broad groups, the first group being those which directly or indirectly block the renin–angiotensin system (RAS), for example, ACEIs, angiotensin receptor antagonists (ARAs), direct renin inhibitors (DRIs), and to a lesser extent β-blockers. The second group of drugs works by increasing water and sodium excretion, thereby reducing intravascular volume, or by causing vasodilatation through non-RAS pathways, for example, diuretics and calcium channel blockers (CCBs).

MCE offers a unique collection of 930 compounds with identified and potential antihypertensive activity. MCE Antihypertensive Compound Library is critical for antihypertensive drug discovery and development.

The TCA cycle (tricarboxylic acid cycle)—is also known as the Krebs cycle or the citric acid cycle (CAC). The TCA cycle is a series of chemical reactions that release stored energy through the oxidation of acetyl-CoA in carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.

For decades, the TCA cycle has been considered as the central pathway for cell oxidative phosphorylation to produce energy and biosynthesis. Research shows that TCA cycle is associated with many diseases, especially cancer. In colon carcinoma, liver cancer and other cancers, there are mutations that lead to the imbalance of TCA cycle metabolites, indicating that TCA cycle may be related to the occurrence of cancer. Understanding the role and molecular mechanism of TCA cycle in inhibiting or promoting cancer progression will promote the development of new metabolite-based cancer treatment methods in the future.

MCE supplies a unique collection of 72 compounds related to the TCA cycle. MCE TCA Cycle Compound Library is a useful tool for the TCA cycle related research and anti-cancer drug development.