Production, bioprocessing and antiproliferative activity of camptothecin from Aspergillus terreus, endophyte of Cinnamomum camphora: restoring their biosynthesis by indigenous microbiome of C. camphora

Fungal producing potency of camptothecin (CPT) raise the hope for their usage to be a platform for industrial production of CPT, nevertheless, attenuation of their productivity of CPT with the subculturing and preservation is the challenge. So, screening for novel endophytic fungal isolates with a reliable CPT-biosynthetic stability was the objective. Among the isolated endophytic fungi from the tested medicinal plants, Aspergillus terreus OQ642314.1, endophyte of Cinnamomum camphora, exhibits the highest yield of CPT (89.4 μg/l). From the NMR, FT-IR and LC–MS/MS analyses, the extracted CPT from A. terreus gave the same structure and molecular mass fragmentation pattern of authentic CPT (349 m/z). The putative CPT had a significant activity against MCF7 (0.27 µM) and HEPG-2 (0.8 µM), with a strong affinity to inhibits the human Topoisomerase 1 activity (IC(50) 0.362 μg/ml) as revealed from the Gel-based DNA relaxation assay. The purified CPT displayed a strong antimicrobial activity for various bacterial (E. coli and B. cereus) and fungal (A. flavus and A. parasiticus) isolates, ensuring the unique tertiary, and stereo-structure of A. terreus for penetrating the microbial cell walls and targeting the topoisomerase I. The higher dual activity of the purified CPT as antimicrobial and antitumor, emphasize their therapeutic efficiency, especially with growth of the opportunistic microorganisms due to the suppression of human immune system with the CPT uses in vivo. The putative CPT had an obvious activity against the tumor cell (MCF7) metastasis, and migration as revealed from the wound healing assay. The overall yield of A. terreus CPT was maximized with the Blackett-Burman design by twofolds increment (164.8 μg/l). The CPT yield by A. terreus was successively diminished with the multiple fungal subculturing, otherwise, the CPT productivity of A. terreus was restored, and increased over the zero culture upon coculturing with C. camphora microbiome (1.5% w/v), ensuring the restoring of CPT biosynthetic potency of A. terreus by the plant microbiome-derived chemical signals “microbial communication”. This is the first report exploring the feasibility of A. terreus “endophyte of C. camphora” to be a preliminary platform for commercial production of CPT with a reliable sustainability upon uses of indigenous C. camphora microbiome. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12934-023-02158-3.