Endophytic fungi: the treasure chest of antibacterial substances.

Over more than 20 years, the endophytic fungi have been explored as "biofactories" of novel bioactive substances, and they have not disappointed. Among the extracts and pure substances obtained from the culture broths or fungal biomass, some have exerted antibacterial activity ranging from moderate to powerful when tested on the bacterial strains resistant to the antibiotics currently in use. In this article we review the accumulated data on endophytic fungi isolated from plants that produce metabolites with antibacterial activity against human pathogenic bacteria.