Quicker, cheaper and better production of vaccines and medicines using fungus

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Quicker, cheaper and better production of vaccines and medicines

using fungus ...

01.03.2007

http://www.innovations-

report.de/html/berichte/medizin_gesundheit/bericht-79831.html

innovations report - Bad Homburg,Germany

.... opportunities in a £2,000 million pound market for ish

science team

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A UK team has identified some major problems which prevent

specialist pharmaceutical companies from using simple fungal

cultures to make modern therapeutic drugs in huge quantities in

fermenters, instead of using animal, plant or insect cells,

scientists heard today (Tuesday 27 March 2007) at the Society for

General Microbiology's 160th Meeting at the University of

Manchester, UK, which will run from 26 – 29 March 2007.

Vaccines for diseases like bird flu or hepatitis, life saving human

hormones like insulin, and specialist protein based medicines are

now part of a two thousand million pound market (£2,000,000,000)

worldwide.

Researchers are trying to respond rapidly to new threats, previously

untreatable diseases and the need for specific vaccines by making

industrial quantities of therapeutic protein as potential medicines.

To make sufficient quantities the scientists use bioreactors filled

with modified yeasts, bacteria and other microbes such as the

Aspergillus fungus.

" We chose the filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger, since other

Aspergillus species have already been successfully modified to make

useful medicines. Our version makes a lysozyme, an important cell

defence component which kills invading bacteria " , says Qiang Li,

from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK. " Although the

fungus will helpfully make the proteins we want in economic

quantities, because the system is alive, it also makes unwanted by-

products such as protein digesting enzymes which can damage or

contaminate the valuable medicines we need " .

Efforts to use this filamentous fungus to produce pure and

industrial quantities of medicines commercially have always run into

this problem of contamination. The Aspergillus types of fungus

(there are over 180) often grow in damp, carbon-rich and oxygen-rich

conditions such as on the surface of your compost heap, or on slices

of bread. The scientists have discovered that by providing plenty of

carbon to feed the fungus, and lowering the temperature, they can

minimise or even prevent the damage from unwanted by-products.

The ish team also discovered that the contaminants, the protein

digesting enzymes, are unaffected by oxygen, but the fungus itself

can be encouraged to make more of the valuable lysozyme by

oxygenating the growing culture, speeding up the fungal metabolism,

and drug production times.

" These new proteins are an important element in the up and coming

revolution in clinical medicine, ushering in an era of safer and

more effective protein based medicines. However our knowledge is

still far from complete " , says Qiang Li.

Faye Stokes | Quelle: alphagalileo

Weitere Informationen: www.sgm.ac.uk/