Pharmaceutical Fermentation: Antibiotic Production and Processing

Dear Colleagues,

The discovery of antibiotics led to a truly cardinal revolution in medicine, allowing humanity to effectively fight against numerous diseases. It is impossible to count how many human lives and how many people have been saved from suffering since the early 1950s thanks to the introduction of antibiotics into medical practice. The discovery of antibiotics is perhaps the most significant for humanity from a humanitarian point of view.

Currently, most antibiotics on the market are produced by fermentation as such (natural antibiotics), or using fermentation to obtain substrates for the further in vitro synthesis of antibiotics (semi-synthetic antibiotics). Over the past 70 years, since the early 1950s, the level of knowledge in the field of antibiotic fermentation has grown significantly. By classical methods (random mutagenesis and screening), numerous improved strains were created, and the level of antibiotic production was increased by 100–1000 or more times compared with natural isolates. Then, the means of genetic engineering, which appeared in the arsenal of scientists in the late 1980s, made it possible to carry out directed changes leading to the creation of industrial strains producing antibiotics. Modern technologies make it possible to change the pathways of biosynthesis in microorganism strains for the production of new antibiotics, effectively “awaken” orphan biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) for screening discovered natural products for antibiotic activity. At the current stage of scientific development, it is possible to obtain highly active antibiotic producers by combining classical methods and methods of recombinant technology, which are scaled up in industrial-scale fed-batch fermentation. For the easier perception of all this knowledge, it is important to summarize it in one thematic Special Issue.

In this regard, the goal of this Special Issue is to publish both recent innovative research results as well as review papers in the field of Pharmaceutical Fermentation: Antibiotic Production and Processing.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Screening for novel natural products with antibiotic properties;
• Obtaining high-yielding strains for antibiotic production by classical methods;
• Improving the production of antibiotics in industrial strains through genetic manipulations;
• Production of novel antibiotics through optimizing fermentation conditions;
• Reprogramming strains to produce alternative antibiotics using genetic engineering;
• Industrial-scale fed-batch fermentation;
• Utilization and recycling of antibiotic fermentation waste.

Dr. Alexander A. Zhgun
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fermentation is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.