.SEARCH FOR ANTIBIOTICS: SCREEXlXCi PROORA.MS 



25 



iug activity against M ycohactcrium cos, 21 

 were classified as a colorless group, 20 reel- 

 yellow, 12 red-blue, and 8 red-brown. It was 

 suggested that use of media in which pig- 

 ments could be detected readily might re- 

 ^■eal a correlation l)et\veen antibiotic ac- 

 tivity and some other property. 



Antitumor Survctjs 



Considerable attention has recently l)een 

 focused upon the products of actinomycetes 

 that possess antitumor activities. A number 

 of different substances active against neo- 

 plastic cells ha\'e been isolated and de- 

 scribed (Table '.]). None of them can be said 

 to have become cures for cancers, although 

 some appear to offer definite promise. These 

 substance^s are not comparable to antil)iotics 

 in their activities, although many appear to 

 be definitely antibiotics, since they are also 

 active upon bacteria or fungi. They are in- 

 cluded in this treatise because the methods 

 of approach to their isolation are similar to 

 those concerned with antibiotics and also 

 because of their selective action against 

 different cells, 'iliese substances include 

 actinomycin (Waksman and Woodruff, 

 1940), azaserine (Bartz ct a/., lUo:!; I':hrlich 



Table 3 



Groii pitKj of adi iinin ),retc (lutiliiunir pnidurls 

 (Umezavvil, 195()) 



Pigmented sulistancps 



Actinomyfin l'lur;iiii\ cin 



Cancidin .\c-tinnH()cin 



Ractinomycin ( Iriseolutein 



Chromomx'cin Actiiuilpukin 



Mitomycin 

 .\cidic .sub.staiicf's c 



Sarkom\'cin 



Table 4 



Results of srrceuing of actinomycetes for antitmnor 

 substances (Umezawa, 1956) 



()\\ molecular wt'iglit 



fi Diazo -5-<).\(!-L-norleu- 



ciiic 

 Carzinophiliu 



Aza.serine 

 High molecular weight suh.stances 



Carcinomycin Carzinocidin 



1 'urine antimetaf)olite 



Purcjmycin 

 Antifungal substances 



Tovocamycin Hygroscopin 



Table 5 



Results of scfceninti acti noui ycetes for untilu nior 

 substances, using HeLa cells (Umezav\a, 195()) 



et al., 19.")4), ()-diazo-")-oxo-L-norleucine 

 (DOX) (Clarke (/ a/., U)5(i), carcinomycin 

 (Hasoya, H).").")), carzinocidin (Harada et al., 

 n)")()), carzinophiliu (Hata d a!., 19o4), gan- 

 cidin (Also ct al., H)r)4), melanomycin (Suga- 

 wara d (iL, HloT), mitontycin (Sugawara and 

 Hata, 19o()), pluramycin (Alaeda ct al., 

 19")()), puromycin (Troy ct al., 1958), sarko- 

 mycin (Cmezawa et al., 1954; Hooper et al., 

 1955), teomycic acid (Oda, 19()0), and many 

 others. 



The screening methods devised to isolate 

 antibiotics have been modified for the isola- 

 tion of antitiuiior agents (Tables 4 and 5). 

 One such method consists of isolating actino- 



