Endophytic fungi live inside plant tissues -- roots, stems, leaves -- without causing any visible disease. Honestly, that alone is fascinating. But what makes them medically important is what they produce: potent secondary metabolites, some of which have turned out to be drugs or drug leads. In this study, we surveyed endophytic fungi from 14 medicinal plant species growing in and around Ghaziabad district over two fieldwork phases (2021--2023 and 2024--2025). In all, we isolated and identified 312 strains belonging to 38 genera. Colletotrichum, Aspergillus, and Penicillium showed up most often -- together, they made up nearly half of everything we found (47.1%). ITS-rDNA sequencing sorted 89% of strains to species level. Eleven strains didn't match anything in the databases well enough -- we're treating those as potentially new taxa.

We screened everything against six pathogens, including MRSA and drug-resistant Candida. About 19.6% of strains showed real activity against at least one target. The standout was isolate HRIT-EF-47, pulled from Ocimum sanctum roots. Its MIC against MRSA came in at 3.1 µg/mL -- that's on par with linezolid, the standard drug. HPLC-MS work on 18 priority strains turned up 74 secondary metabolites, nine of them never described before; four of those nine are now fully characterised by NMR. Separately, three Curcuma longa endophytes (all Aspergillus terreus) knocked down TNF-a by 55--68% in macrophage assays -- and there was no curcumin in their profiles, which surprised us.