J. A. V. Lopez et al.
respectively) demonstrated the more lipophilic property of 2
over 1.
To our knowledge, nocardamin glucuronide (1) is the
first example of a siderophore glucuronide. Glucuronides
play an important role in drug metabolism and pharmaco-
kinetics [14], such as detoxification and enterohepatic
recirculation, although majority of the studies are focused
on the mammalian system. In addition, there are only few
reports on the production of glucuronides by microbial
enzymes [12] and little is known about their function and
biosynthesis. Though a minute amount of nocardamin (2)
was also found in the CD culture, the production of 1 and 2
were particularly enhanced in the OA medium. While a
possible explanation for this outcome could not be sup-
posed, it shows that OSMAC is an efficient way of stimu-
lating cryptic and variable secondary metabolism. On the
other hand, siderophores continue to be a hot topic in the
areas of antibiotics, drug conjugates, drug resistance, and
combination therapy for the treatment of various illnesses
such as infections, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases
Fig. 4 Dose-response curve of the siderophore activity 1, 2, and
deferoxamine (DFO)
[
15–17].
To confirm this, the hydrolysate and standards, D- and L-
GlcA, were separately reacted with L-cysteine methyl ester
followed by phenylisothiocyanate according to the method
of Tanaka et al. [10]. The derivatives were analysed by LC-
MS and results showed that the mass and retention time of
the sample matched that of D-GlcA (Fig. S17). Thus, GlcA
was unambiguously determined to have the β-D
configuration.
Since nocardamin (2) is a known siderophore [7], the
iron binding activity of 1 was evaluated via the chrome
azurol S assay [11]. Indeed, 1 exhibited iron chelating
properties comparable to 2 and deferoxamine (DFO or
desferrioxamine B) at IC50 13.4, 9.5, and 6.6 μM, respec-
tively (Fig. 4). On the other hand, the cytotoxicity test of 1
and 2 at 39 and 50 μM, respectively, was negative against
the following cell lines: HeLa (cervical cancer), HL-60
Acknowledgements This work was supported in part by JSPS
KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP16H06276, JP17H06412, and
JP18H03945. We would like to thank Ms Harumi Aono, Ms Akiko
Okano, Dr Rachael Uson-Lopez, Ms Emiko Sanada, and Dr Motoko
Uchida for technical support.
Compliance with ethical standards
Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of
interest.
Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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