Biodiscovery programme conducted at the Gause Institute, Moscow, Russia

Abstract

The Gause Institute of New Antibiotics, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, in Moscow, Russia, was established in 1953. For more than 25 years it was headed by late Professor GF Gause and, from 1986, it was directed by the late Professor Yurii V Dudnik. In the process of screening for new biologically active substances, a number of antibiotics were developed based on original strains isolated in the Institute, and these were produced on industrial scale for the pharmaceutical industry. These include antibacterial antibiotics gramicidin S, monomycin (paromomycin), colimycin (neomycin), albomycin, ristomycin, lincomycin, kanamycin, heliomycin and representatives of nearly all-important groups of antitumour antibiotics, e.g. olivomycin, bruneomycin (streptonigrine), rubomycin (daunorubicin), carminomycin and bleomycetin (bleomycin A-5).