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Review summarizes diverse fungal secondary metabolites and innovative discovery strategies, indicating therapeutic potential.
Fungi continue to be a rich source of structurally unique and biologically active secondary metabolites. In 2025, a total of 992 novel fungal secondary metabolites (including 26 pairs of optical isomers and a pair of rotamers) were reported, comprising 422 polyketides, 321 terpenoids, 94 alkaloids, 106 peptides, 30 glycosides, and 19 steroids. This review systematically summarizes the structural diversity, biological activities, and discovery strategies associated with these compounds, with a particular focus on emerging approaches such as metabolomics-guided isolation, genome mining, and biosynthetic pathway engineering. By linking chemical innovation to therapeutic potential, the present review aims to provide strategic directions for exploring fungal chemical diversity and highlights its promising role in addressing challenges in drug discovery.
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Gong et al. (2026) studied this question.
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