Mutactimycin PR, a new anthracycline antibiotic from Saccharothrix sp. SA 103. I. Taxonomy, fermentation, isolation and biological activities.

In the course of screening for new antibacterial agents, a new isolate collected from a soil sample of an arid area in south Algeria, produced a red pigment which was shown an antagonistic action against a gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis. The isolate was identified as Saccharothrix sp. and named SA 103. The red pigment, eluted by HPLC on reverse phase C18 column, contained two compounds of an anthracycline antibiotics group. The structure of the major product (2) was characterized as mutactimycin C, and PR (1) was a new member of this group, designated as mutactimycin PR. These compounds showed an antibiotic activity against certain gram-positive bacteria in vitro. This is the first report of mutactimycins production by the genus Saccharothrix.