MyxoTech. Unlocking microbial dark matter chemistry.
Chemical diversity for a new era
Leverage our exclusive small molecule library for your drug discovery pipeline.
Our library of natural product chemistry.
The pharmaceutical industry has entered a new era. Novel chemical diversity is needed to address the growing number of identified drug targets.
MyxoTech offers a hyper-organized library of unprecedented microbial dark matter chemistry produced by strains from the phylum Myxococcota.
Employing our Myxo Dark Matter Platform, the library has been systematically built leveraging genomic and metabolomic data to maximize the chemical diversity available to our clients.
Product and Services
MyxoTech makes a novel pool of small molecule chemistry accessible to drug discovery companies. To complement this product, we offer a full menu of services to ensure our client’s natural product preclinical needs are met.
Library
Access to our library of unprecedented chemistry
Elucidation
Identification and elucidation of the active component
Optimization
Drug lead and production yield optimization
This is MyxoTech.
Built through decades of experience in natural product drug discovery.
Our History and Mission
We are a team of seasoned natural product drug hunters, offering decades of experience and passion for drug discovery from myxobacteria.
Our technology was spearheaded within the Microbial Natural Products (MINS) department headed by Rolf Müller at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) and licensed from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI).
The MINS department currently has several patented antimicrobial components in preclinical development. With MyxoTech, the founders are extending the potential of myxobacterial specialized metabolism to indication areas outside of infectious disease.
Frequently Asked Questions
Learn more about our process, our library, and how we work with clients.
What impact have natural products had in the pharmaceutical industry?
Nature is a historically rich source of drugs. Penicillin, lovastatin, rapamycin, and many others exemplify the value of nature in drug discovery. Since 1981, roughly a quarter of all approved drugs are natural products or derivatives of natural products.
In the 1990s and 2000s, the pharmaceutical industry moved away from natural products for several reasons including: 1) challenges culturing medically relevant organisms, 2) insufficient production yield, and 3) high rediscovery rates of known active components. MyxoTech addresses these limitations to make an underprospected library of novel small molecule chemistry accessible to drug discovery companies without the need for deep domain know-how.
What are myxobacteria?
Myxobacteria are a group of organisms that make up the phylum Myxococcota. These predatory bacteria produce a diversity of bioactive metabolites, including epothilone B, the natural precursor to semisynthetic cancer drug ixabepilone (trade name: Ixempra).
Why are myxobacteria considered to be on the edge of microbial dark matter?
The vast majority of bacteria comprise what is known as microbial dark matter. They exist in nature but scientists have yet to successfully grow them under laboratory conditions. Myxobacteria lie on the edge of microbial dark matter due to the exceptional challenge culturing a large portion of them in the lab. MyxoTech has the unique know-how to grow the group’s expansive diversity better than anyone.
Why should I screen MyxoTech’s natural product library?
The phylum Myxococcota is a proven source of unique bioactive small molecules. Roughly 80% of known myxobacterial scaffolds were found to be exclusively produced by strains from within the phylum when compared to the chemistry of other microbial groups. So far, we have only scratched the surface of the full depth of myxobacterial small molecule diversity. Laboratory synthesis and implementation of artificial intelligence for drug design cannot mimic the breadth of what myxobacteria can produce.
We have previously demonstrated that more expansive myxobacterial taxonomic diversity corresponds to more expansive small molecule diversity. Employing our Myxo Dark Matter platform, we have systematically built a strain library comprised of taxonomically novel and highly diverse myxobacteria. The corresponding small molecule library, housing what these bacteria produce, is hyper-organized to ensure we maximize novel chemical diversity for our clients.
Drug discovery is a historically serendipitous venture. MyxoTech is reducing the need for serendipity in exchange for a data-driven strategy that leverages genomics and metabolomics. Our core objective is to ensure our clients evaluate the true potential of chemical diversity the phylum has to offer.
Can I screen the library in our own biological evaluation system?
Yes, samples are prepared for you here in the MyxoTech lab and shipped to you for biological screening.
Our company has no experience with natural products. Can we still work with MyxoTech?
Yes – MyxoTech offers the full menu of services to carry any project through a preclinical natural product pipeline from hit identification to production yield optimization of the component of interest.
What types of chemistry are included in the library?
Our small molecule library consists of small peptides (NRPs and RiPPS), polyketides, small peptide-polyketide hybrids, terpenoids, other specialized metabolite types, in addition to primary metabolites. Molecular weights generally range from 200 to 1500 Da. The samples are available in pre-fraction form. Pre-fractions are deconvoluted mixtures that have been sufficiently processed and ready for biological evaluation.
The MyxoTech Team
Founding members include (from left to right) Dr. Thomas Hesterkamp (COO), Dr. Ronald Garcia (Founder/Advisor), Dr. Peter Sullivan (CEO), Dr. Olga Kalinina (Founder/Advisor), Dr. Jennifer Herrmann (Founder/Advisor), and Dr. Rolf Müller (CSO). The team brings the multidisciplinary expertise required to carry a natural product through the preclinical phase of drug development.
Dr. Thomas Hesterkamp
COO
Thomas is a trained human biologist. He spent 15 years in industry, in different companies and roles. His last industry position was EVP Science & Innovation at Evotec. Since 2013 Thomas has been serving the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) as Head of Product Development. Thomas brings relevant expertise in small molecule drug discovery and early development. He has served numerous collaborations with industry as project manager and/or member of joint steering committees.
Dr. Ronald Garcia
Founder
Ronald is the Head of Microbiology at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) and has been with the institute since its inception in 2009. He has spent the last 25 years developing strategies to tap into the phylum Myxococcota’s expansive taxonomic diversity. His innovative techniques have dramatically increased the phylogenetic space available for drug discovery at HIPS and are foundational to MyxoTech. He continues to isolate novel myxobacterial species from diverse environmental samples.
Dr. Peter Sullivan
CEO
Peter obtained a PhD in pharmacognosy in 2020 from the University of Illinois at Chicago implementing a drug discovery strategy to identify anti-cancer natural products. Additionally, his on-going work has been to comprehensively organize the phylogenetic distribution of natural product chemistry using metabolomics and genomics. Peter has had formative experiences collaborating with Evotec SE and training at natural products drug discovery company Sirenas. Peter has worked as a senior scientist at HIPS since 2021.
Dr. Olga Kalinina
Founder
Olga graduated from the Moscow State University in Russia with a degree in mathematics and later completed her PhD in molecular biology at the Engelhardt Institute for Molecular Biology at the Russian Academy of Sciences. She spent her postdoc at the European Molecular Biology Lab and the University of Heidelberg and then joined the Max Planck Institute for Informatics as a junior group leader. Since 2019, Olga has been a research group leader at HIPS and a professor for drug bioinformatics at Saarland University where she has been elucidating the depth of myxobacterial small molecule potential among other activities.
Dr. Jennifer Herrmann
Founder
Jennifer Herrmann obtained a chemistry degree from Technical University Kaiserslautern followed by earning a PhD in pharmaceutical biotechnology from Saarland University. Jennifer currently leads the biological discovery team at the Department of Microbial Natural Products (MINS) at HIPS focused on translating novel natural product anti-infectives into clinic ready drug leads, including several already patented myxobacterial small molecules. Jennifer brings more than 10 years of experience in screening technologies, compound library management, and profiling of potential new drug candidates in various indications.
Dr. Rolf Müller
CSO
Rolf Müller is professor of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at Saarland University and Managing Director of HIPS. He has authored >600 peer reviewed papers and has an h-index of 96. Rolf has received several awards, including the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, the PHOENIX Pharmacy Research Award, the DECHEMA Prize, and the Inhoffen Medal. His laboratory has dedicated itself to the exploration of bacterial natural product biosynthetic pathways for almost 20 years. He is the scientific architect of the HIPS pharmaceutical ecosystem that probes myxobacteria to develop anti-infection drug leads.