The concept of small-molecule mimicry even of weak microbial metabolites present in rodents and humans, as a means to expand drug repertoires, is new. Hitherto, there are few proof-of-concept papers demonstrating utility of this concept. More recently, papers demonstrating mimicry of intestinal microbial metabolites could expand the drug repertoire for diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We opine that, as more functional metabolite–receptor pairings are discovered, small-molecule metabolite mimicry could be a significant effort in drug discovery.

中文翻译：

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人类微生物代谢物拟态作为扩大潜在药物化学空间的策略。

小分子模拟的概念，甚至是啮齿动物和人类中存在的弱微生物代谢物，作为扩大药物库的手段，是一个新概念。迄今为止，很少有概念验证论文证明这一概念的实用性。最近，论文证明肠道微生物代谢物的模拟可以扩大治疗炎症性肠病（IBD）等疾病的药物库。我们认为，随着更多功能性代谢物-受体配对的发现，小分子代谢物模拟可能成为药物发现的重大努力。