Some nutritional requirements of Streptomyces griseus 3570 for growth and candicidin production.

An earlier paper (Lechevalier, Acker, Corke, Haenseler, and Waksman, 1953), announcing the addition of candicidin to a rapidly growing list of antifungal antibiotics, described the morphological and cultural characteristics of Streptomyces griseus 3570, from which candicidin originated, its selective antibiotic action, and methods by which the agent itself could be isolated from culture broths in semipure form. Because of the high activity of candicidin preparations against Candida albicans, use of this antibiotic in combined therapy to reduce secondary Candida infections (Woods, Manning, and Patterson, 1951) is a distinct possibility. Kligman and Lewis (1953) have already had promising results with candicidin in the treatment of experimental moniliasis, blastomycosis, and sporotrichosis in mice. Another recent report (Solotorovsky, 1953) confirms these findings. Regarding the nutritional requirements of various strains of Streptomyces griseus, much information is available concerning the development of new or improved media for streptomycin production. Most of the media developed for this purpose contain ammonium salts as nitrogen sources; for example, ammonium lactate (Hubbard and Thornberry, 1946; Thornberry, 1946), ammonium nitrate (Spilsbury, 1948; Saunders and Sylvester, 1947; Baron, 1950), or ammonium chloride (Thornberry and Anderson, 1948; Hubbard and Thornberry, 1950) in combination with glucose and mineral salts. The preferential utilization of amino acids for streptomycin production by Streptomyces griseus was indicated by Dulaney (1948, 1949), who found that the use of L-proline resulted in higher potencies than those obtained with other single organic or inorganic nitrogen sources tested. Among the carbon sources, glucose and mannose favored highest streptomycin yields, followed in order by starch, dextrin, and mannitol. Other workers (Eiser and McFarlane, 1948) found that a mixture of the amino acids valine, histidine, and arginine produced highest streptomycin titers, but that greater growth resulted when aspartic acid was substituted for valine in the medium. More recently, O'Brien, Wagman, and Perlman (1952)