Screening Actinomycetes for Novel Antimycobacterial and Anticancer Molecules

Globally, tuberculosis was the number one mortality-causing infectious disease before the COVID episode, and cancer remains the second most cause of death in the chart of health disorders only after the heart disease. In both cases, be it the emergence of drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis or the drug-resistant cancerous cells, they pose a serious health threat that needs to be addressed urgently. Plethora of novel bioactive molecules that deal with the resistance part as well as become effective in treatment regime are the need of the hour. Novel actinomycetes are an excellent source for such molecules, and the chance of finding novel ones from novel strains is always mitigating. This chapter deals with the isolation and identification of antimycobacterial molecules as well as anticancer molecules from novel actinomycetes.