Next Time, Save Mushrooms for the Pizza!

Mann et al. (2018) use recombinant human tyrosinase to screen for novel inhibitors of pigmentation. They develop thiamidol, a new thiazolyl-resorcinol derivative, that is a submicromolar tyrosinase inhibitor and effective for treating solar lentigines. Thiamidol and established inhibitors of pigmentation exhibit substantially different activities on human and mushroom tyrosinase, supporting use of the human enzyme in high-throughput screens.