Isolation, Purification and Characterization of Vinblastine and Vincristine from Endophytic Fungus Fusarium oxysporum Isolated from Catharanthus roseus

Abstract

Endophytic fungi reside in a symbiotic fashion inside their host plants, mimic their chemistry and interestingly, produce the same natural products as their hosts and are thus being screened for the production of valuable compounds like taxol, camptothecin, podophyllotoxin, etc. Vinblastine and vincristine are excellent anti-cancer drugs but their current production using plants is non-abundant and expensive. In order to make these drugs readily available to the patients at affordable prices, we isolated the endophytic fungi from Catharanthus roseus plant and found a fungus AA-CRL-6 which produces vinblastine and vincristine in appreciable amounts. These drugs were purified by TLC and HPLC and characterized using UV-Vis spectroscopy, ESI-MS, MS/MS and 1H NMR. One liter of culture filtrate yielded 76 µg and 67 µg of vinblastine and vincristine respectively. This endophytic fungal strain was identified as Fusarium oxysporum based upon its cultural and morphological characteristics and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequence analysis.

Secondary metabolites from endophytic fungus from Lippia sidoides Cham.

“…These substances contribute greatly to the antioxidative activities credited to L. sidoides plants (Funari et al, 2012). Kumar et al (2013) characterized the vinblastine alkaloid from the extract of the endophytic fungus F. oxysporium, isolated from Catharanthus roseus. By HPLC analyzes, they obtained 76 μg L -1 of the compound.…”

Plant Bioactive Metabolites and Drugs Produced by Endophytic Fungi of Spermatophyta

“…Endophytic strains of Alternaria sp. [307] and F. oxysporum [308] from C. roseus respectively produced vinblastine and vincristine, while more recently another strain of the latter species has been found to produce both compounds [309], and to synthesize vincristine from vinblastine when the latter compound was added to the growth medium [310]. Finally, an unidentified strain from Vinca minor has been reported for production of vincamine [311].…”

Metabolite analysis of endophytic fungi from cultivars of Zingiber officinale Rosc. identifies myriad of bioactive compounds including tyrosol

“…Fusarium sp. has a wide occurrence as endophyte in many plant species including Drepanocarpus lunatus (Liu et al 2016), Axonopus compressus (Zakaria and Ning 2013), Nothapodytes foetida (Musavi and Balakrishnan 2013), Dioscorea zingiberensis (Li et al 2014), Solanum lycopersicum (Aimé et al 2013), Juniperus recurva, Catharanthus roseus (Kumar et al 2013), Ginkgo biloba (Cui et al 2012), etc. Colletotrichum sp.…”

“…Endophytic F. oxysporum is also reported to produce its corresponding host metabolites such as podophyllotoxin, taxol (Elavarasi et al 2012), ginkgolide B (Cui et al 2012), vincristine, and vinblastin (Kumar et al 2013), which thus indicates its close association with different hosts.…”