Early-Stage Hurdles in Recombinant Therapeutics Development and the Impact of Our Novel Conformases/Foldases
M. Raafat El-Gewely
Institute of Medical Biology, University of Tromsø, 9037 Tromsø, Norway
Abstract:
After the discovery of recombinant DNA technology in the early 1970’s, biotechnology in general and medicine in particular are never the same. This technology has impacted the means of producing bio-therapeutics in a great revolutionary way. Billions of dollars are generated by producing recombinant therapeutic proteins that helped millions of patients all over the world.
However, the number of actual recombinant therapeutic proteins on the market today is relatively limited and is dwarfed by the number of genes/proteins in human genome and other relevant genomes. Part of the problem is due to the early stage failure of expression of potential therapeutic recombinant proteins because of degradation, aggregation, inclusion bodies, deficient or altered glycosylation and lack of solubility & activity. These problems also affected drug discovery since several of the validated protein targets could not be produced.
In my talk I will discuss the fact that primary structure is not alone that dictates the tertiary structure of proteins. I will also discuss how improving the molecular and genetic environment in the host (initially E. coli) by our novel conformases/foldases (patents pending) can help reduce the impact of the bottle-neck problems in the recombinant field.
