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Mupirocin: applications and production

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Abstract

Mupirocin is an antibiotic from monocarboxylic acid class used as antibacterial agent against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and can be obtained as a mixture of four pseudomonic acids by Pseudomonas fluorescens biosynthesis. Nowadays improving antibiotics occupies an important place in the pharmaceutical industry as more and more resistant microorganisms are developing. Mupirocin is used to control the MRSA outbreaks, for infections of soft tissue or skin and for nasal decolonization. Due to its wide use without prescription, the microorganism’s resistance to Mupirocin increased from up to 81%, thus becoming imperative its control or improvement. As the biotechnological production of Mupirocin has not been previously reviewed, in the present paper we summarize some consideration on the biochemical process for the production of pseudomonic acids (submerged fermentation and product recovery). Different strains of Pseudomonas, different culture medium and different conditions for the fermentation were analysed related to the antibiotics yield and the product recovery step is analysed in relation to the final purity. However, many challenges have to be overcome in order to obtain pseudomonic acid new versions with better properties related to antibacterial activity.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Grant of Ministry or Research and Innovation, CNCS—UEFISCDI, Project PN III PCE 6/2017, Code PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2016-0100, within PNCDI III.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Protection “Cristofor Simionescu”, “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, Iasi, Romania

    Alexandra Tucaliuc, Alexandra Cristina Blaga & Dan Cascaval

  2. Faculty of Medical Bioengineering, “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi, Romania

    Anca Irina Galaction

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  1. Alexandra Tucaliuc
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  2. Alexandra Cristina Blaga
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  3. Anca Irina Galaction
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  4. Dan Cascaval
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Correspondence to Alexandra Cristina Blaga.

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Tucaliuc, A., Blaga, A.C., Galaction, A.I. et al. Mupirocin: applications and production. Biotechnol Lett 41, 495–502 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-019-02670-w

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