Algae: The New Medicinal Bio-factory
A San Diego startup has devised a way to produce monoclonal antibody drugs on the cheap, using freshwater green algae that have been genetically-engineered to produce human-like proteins:
“The Rincon system involves introducing the gene sequence responsible for producing a particular human protein into the cells of the algae. Once there, the algae cell “reads” the human gene sequence and begins producing the protein.
The algae grow and multiply in a petrie dish, and then are transferred and grown in plastic bags of increasing size, all the way up to 25,000 liters. The algae are then harvested, and the human protein is extracted from the plant cells and purified.”
The process is approximately ten times cheaper than the traditional method of splicing engineered hamster or mouse cells with human DNA components.
Genetically-engineered algae is in the news again: this time because the state of Hawaii has rejected a biotech company’s proposal to grow a strain for the purposes of developing therapeutic drugs. Opponents of the proposal wanted more research into whether the algae could escape into the wild, and if so what sort of environmental impact it might have.
Comment by Administrator — May 25, 2005 @ 1:37 pm