Karen Wendt

Natural products (NPs) remain one of the most important sources of novel bioactive molecules, particularly in drug discovery. Fungal natural products are of special interest due to their chemical diversity and complex ecological roles, yet efforts to systematically mine fungi for new metabolites face longstanding challenges. A central bottleneck lies in the curation of crude extract libraries.

Abstract Natural product libraries are crucial to drug development, but large libraries drastically increase the time and cost during initial high throughput screens. Here, we developed a method that leverages liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry spectral similarity to dramatically reduce library size, with minimal bioactive loss. This method offers a broadly applicable strategy for accelerated drug discovery with cost reductions, which enable implementation in resource-limited settings.