Microbial transformation of the antimalarial and anticancer drug artemisinin by white-rot basidiomycetes

Abstract

We studied transformation of the potential anticancer drug artemisinin by the white-rot basidiomycetes Pycnoporus sanguineus and Funalia trogii. The fungi were grown on sucrose-malt broth in the presence of artemisinin for 14 days. Transformation products were extracted with ethyl acetate and analyzed by HPLC. Each of the fungi produced only a single metabolite from artemisinin. Products of transformation were identified by mass spectrometry and NMR methods. 5β-Hydroxyartemisinin was isolated from the incubation medium of P. sanguineus in 92.1% yield and 7β-hydroxyartemisinin was isolated from the incubation medium of F. trogii in 89.7% yield.

Possibilities of fungal biodegradation of antimalarial and anticancer primaquine in the environment

“…Primaquine is 8-aminoquinoline drug has been used against malarial disease (Graves et al, 2018;Parshikov et al, 2018a) for over 50 years. Recently, primaquine has also been used for the treatment of cancer (Choi et al, 2016).…”