McMahon Aileen M B, Twigg Matthew S, Marchant Roger, Banat Ibrahim M
Pharmaceutical Science Research Group, Biomedical Science Research Institute, Ulster University, Coleraine BT52 1SA, UK.
Pharmaceuticals (Basel). 2025 May 2;18(5):676. doi: 10.3390/ph18050676.
Pharmaceutical scientists have researched the potential of secondary metabolites biosynthesized by microorganisms as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for the treatment of cancer. Ideally, these APIs should possess anticancer bioactivity that specifically targets tumor cells while having little cytotoxic effect on healthy tissue. Biosurfactants are microbial secondary metabolites with surface-active properties and individual bioactivities that have the potential to either destroy cancer cells in a targeted fashion or prevent tumor cell formation. Currently, the best-studied class of microbial biosurfactants for the purpose of anticancer bioactivity is glycolipids, which contain a hydrophilic sugar moiety bonded to a hydrophobic fatty acid. Anticancer investigations are mainly carried out using in vitro models that show that compounds belonging to each of the four sub-classes of microbial glycolipid have significant anticancer bioactivity. The targeted action of this activity appears to be highly dependent on a specific congener molecular structure with nuanced alterations in structure leading to the killing of both tumor and healthy cells. This review compiles the current literature relating to glycolipid anticancer activity and provides a critical appraisal of exploiting the bioactivity of these compounds as novel anticancer agents. Finally, we propose several suggestions on how this research could be improved moving forward via method standardization.
药物科学家们研究了微生物生物合成的次生代谢产物作为活性药物成分（API）用于癌症治疗的潜力。理想情况下，这些API应具有抗癌生物活性，能够特异性地靶向肿瘤细胞，同时对健康组织的细胞毒性很小。生物表面活性剂是具有表面活性特性和个体生物活性的微生物次生代谢产物，它们有可能以靶向方式破坏癌细胞或阻止肿瘤细胞形成。目前，就抗癌生物活性而言，研究得最充分的一类微生物生物表面活性剂是糖脂，它含有一个与疏水性脂肪酸相连的亲水性糖部分。抗癌研究主要使用体外模型进行，结果表明，微生物糖脂四个亚类中的每一类化合物都具有显著的抗癌生物活性。这种活性的靶向作用似乎高度依赖于特定的同系物分子结构，结构上的细微变化会导致肿瘤细胞和健康细胞均被杀死。这篇综述汇编了当前与糖脂抗癌活性相关的文献，并对利用这些化合物的生物活性作为新型抗癌药物进行了批判性评估。最后，我们就如何通过方法标准化来改进这项研究提出了几点建议。
