Already Pasteur remarked that “la vie empêche la vie” but it was not until Fleming observed the chemical war between microorganisms that this resulted in the first potent antibiotic, penicillin.

Ultupharma has the goal to identify antibiotics with new mechanisms of action using microorganisms as sources to new metabolites. New microorganisms and new methods of cultivation developed in collaboration with a research group at SLU, have been found to produce new metabolites with anti-bacterial and anti-fungal effects. Initial screening for effect against bacteria resistant to present antibiotics and methods to rapidly determine chemical structures, novelty and patentability have been developed. More than 2000 microorganisms have so far been studied, allowing many thousand fractions to be tested annually. Several interesting new compounds have been identified with activities against bacteria and fungi causing disease in humans and animals.

A novel method for isolation of bacteria producing antibacterial peptides was recently published in Frontiers in Microbiology: Selective isolation of multidrug-resistant Pedobacter spp., producers of novel antibacterial peptides. This method resulted in the peptides of the ULT3-programme (ACS Chemical Biology: Isopedopeptins A–H: Cationic Cyclic Lipodepsipeptides from Pedobacter cryoconitis UP508 Targeting WHO Top-Priority Carbapenem-Resistant Bacteria). In the future, this approach is expected to yield many new antibiotic compounds for evaluation as putative new antibiotic drugs.

The ULT1 and ULT4-programmes are also based on compounds produced by microorganisms. The ULT1-compounds are described in Antibacterial 3,6-disubstituted 4-hydroxy-5,6-dihydro-2H-pyran-2-ones from Serratia plymuthica MF371-2, published in the Journal of Natural Products. The ULT1-compounds include two compounds isolated from the soil bacterium Serratia plymuthica, as well as a large number of synthetic analogoues. The ULT1-compounds have potent against Gram-positive bacteria, including MRSA.