Synthetic biology applied to the biomanufacturing of plant natural products of pharmaceutical interest
Why
- Many plant-derived pharmaceutical compounds are still obtained through extraction and purification from plants. 🡪 These processes are often characterized by low yields, high production costs and strong dependence on seasonal and environmental variability.
- Increasing global land-use pressure for food and energy crops further limits the availability of arable land for medicinal plant cultivation, making plant-based production less sustainable and suitable for meeting industrial demand.
- Plant cultivation and extraction are time-consuming and often batch-to-batch variable, limiting pharmaceutical standardization.
- Semi-synthetic approaches can partially overcome these limitations but remain costly and resource-intensive.
- There is a clear need for innovative, sustainable, and scalable production platforms to obtain high-value natural compounds.
What
This is an industrial project in collaboration with Indena Spa and is focused on developing innovative biotechnological processes to produce plant natural products of pharmaceutical interest using engineered yeast strains.
The aim is to replace and/or complement the previous synthesis methods (plant extraction and semi-chemical synthesis) with efficient and eco-sustainable yeast fermentation methods.
The project targets compounds are widely used in anticancer, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial therapies.
How
Our strategy is based on the engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains to reconstruct complete biosynthetic pathways starting from low-cost precursor molecules, such as tryptophan and phenylalanine.
The principal tasks includes:
- Genome editing via CRISPR-Cas9 system to obtain the strains.
- Metabolic optimization to enhance yield and efficiency.
- Laboratory-scale fermentation followed by scale-up processes.
- Evaluation of purity, stability, and bioactivity of the final products.
Who
Researchers involved in the project
This project is funded PNRR (ex D.M. n. 630/2024) and Indena Spa and involves both academic and industrial partners.
Industrial Partners
Valeria Longo, Davide Berlanda
(Indena spa)
Academic Partners
Follow the Plants
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