Synthesis of platensimycin.

In modern drug discovery, antibodies or libraries of simple synthetic organic compounds, mostly of heterocyclic origin, are favored. Natural products play an increasingly inferior role as they are considered structurally too complex, limited in quantity, and difficult to synthesize, manipulate, and derivatize. Thus it was a sensation when a Merck research group reported that classical screening of metabolites from Streptomyces platensis has unearthed a low-molecular-weight organic compound with remarkable antibiotic properties.