Fungi

An infection occurs when another organism enters a person’s body and causes disease. The organisms that cause infections are very diverse and can include things like viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites. The immune system is an effective barrier against infectious agents.

MCE provides a unique collection of 4,310 anti-infective compounds with anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal and anti-parasite activities that can be used for drug screening and other research in anti-microbial area.

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 88 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.

Antimicrobial Peptides (AMPs), also known as antimicrobial peptides or antibiotic peptides, are a class of polypeptides encoded by specific genes in various biological cells and induced by external stimuli. They exhibit broad-spectrum bioactivity against bacteria, fungi, viruses, protozoa, and even tumor cells. AMPs serve as crucial effector molecules in the host's innate immune system.Due to their wide antimicrobial spectrum, low toxicity to normal cells of higher animals, high safety profile, low tendency to induce resistance, and additional benefits such as immune enhancement and antioxidant effects, antimicrobial peptides hold significant promise in new drug development.

MCE offers 58 types of antimicrobial peptides, which can be applied in high-throughput screening for research in anti-infection therapies, immunotherapy, anticancer drug development, and agricultural disease control.

Quinone compounds are a significant class of natural products featuring a conjugated quinone structure, widely distributed in plants, fungi, and microorganisms. Based on their core structures, they can be primarily categorized into benzoquinones, naphthoquinones, phenanthrenequinones, and anthraquinones, among others. This structural diversity endows quinone compounds with a broad spectrum of pharmacological activities, making them key components in traditional Chinese medicine (such as rhubarb, Lithospermum erythrorhizon, and Salvia miltiorrhiza). Modern research has confirmed that their activities encompass anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiviral, antiplatelet aggregation, and neuroprotective effects, among others, establishing them as an important source for drug development.

MCE designs a unique collection of 92 quinones that all come from natural products. MCE Quinones Library is a useful tool for drug discovery that can be used for high throughput screening (HTS) and high content screening (HCS).

Antibiotics are types of antimicrobial products used for the treatment and prevention of bacterial infections. Antibiotics can kill or inhibit bacterial growth. Although the target of an antibiotic is bacteria, some antibiotics also attack fungi and protozoans. However, antibiotics rarely have an effect on viruses. The major mechanism underlying antibiotics is the inhibition or regulation of enzymes involved in cell wall biosynthesis, nucleic acid metabolism and repair, protein synthesis, or disruption of membrane structure. Many of these cellular functions targeted by antibiotics are most active in multiplying cells. Since there is often overlap in these functions between prokaryotic bacterial cells and eukaryotic mammalian cells, it is not surprising that some antibiotics have also been found to be useful as anticancer agents.

MCE supplies a unique collection of 752 antibiotics, including penicillins, cephalosporins, tetracyclines, macrolides, etc. MCE Antibiotics Library is a useful tool for anti-bacterial or anti-cancer drugs discovery.

The high rates of morbidity and mortality caused by fungal infections are associated with the current limited antifungal arsenal and the high toxicity of the compounds. Additionally, identifying novel drug targets is challenging because there are many similarities between fungal and human cells. The most common antifungal targets include fungal RNA synthesis and cell wall and membrane components, though new antifungal targets are being investigated. Nonetheless, fungi have developed resistance mechanisms, such as overexpression of efflux pump proteins, overexpression and changes in drug targets and biofilm formation, emphasizing the importance of discovering new antifungal drugs and therapies. Due to the limited antifungal arsenal, researchers have sought to improve treatment via different approaches, such as the combination of antifungal drugs, development of new formulations for antifungal agents and modifications to the chemical structures of traditional antifungals, etc.

MCE offers a unique collection of 551 compounds with validated antifungal activities. MCE antifungal compound library is an effective tool for drug repurposing screening, combination screening and biological investigation.

Oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface and host a huge species diversity. Marine organisms are considered the most recent source of bioactive natural products after terrestrial plants and nonmarine microorganisms. Marine biological sources are taxonomically diverse and include sponges, tunicates, corals, mollusks, fungi, and sediment-derived bacteria.

Marine organisms can produce a plethora of small molecules with novel chemical structures and potent biological properties, being a rich source for the discovery of pharmacologically active compounds, already with several marine-derived agents approved as drugs. Ziconotide, a peptide originally discovered in a tropical cone snail, was the first marine-derived compound to be approved in the United States in December 2004 for the treatment of pain. Then, in October 2007, Trabectedin became the first marine anticancer drug to be approved in the European Union.

MCE offers a unique collection of 63 marine-sourced natural products which can be used for drug discovery for high throughput screening (HTS) and high content screening (HCS). MCE marine-sourced natural product library is an important source for drug discovery and development.

MCE NP-40 Lysis Buffer is a relatively mild reliable buffers used to lyse cells from animal, plant tissue and fungi, bacteria etc.

MCE Gentamicin-Amphotericin B (500×), sterile is used to prevent contamination of cell culture due to their effective combined action against gram-positive bacteria, gram-negative bacteria, fungi and yeasts, which contains 5 mg/mL of gentamicin, and 125 μg/mL of amphotericin.

MCE Hygromycin B, Sterile (50 mg/mL) is a filtered and sterilized antibiotic solution that can be used directly in cell culture.Hygromycin B is an aminoglycosidic antibiotic purified from Streptomyces hygroscopicus. It acts by binding to the 70S subunit of the bacterial ribosome and inhibiting protein synthesis, leading to the death of bacteria, fungi and mammalian cells.