scholarly journals Introducing the Industry Representative

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 46-47
Author(s):  
Malcolm Weir
Keyword(s):  
Drug Discovery ◽  
Industrial Biotechnology ◽  
Industry Representative

The Biochemical Society is committed to bringing together molecular bioscientists and supporting our members across the community. To this end there has been a renewed focus on those working in the industrial, biotechnology and academic drug discovery sectors. By way of background, the Society's membership has historically been largely made up of academics, with a smaller number of members working in industry. In 2015 an Industry Strategy was developed by the Head of Membership Engagement with the aim of providing a platform for collaboration, facilitating innovation and supporting links between academia and industry.

Ethnobotany and Medicinal Plant Biotechnology: From Tradition to Modern Aspects of Drug Development

Planta Medica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 84 (12/13) ◽  
pp. 834-838 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Kayser
Keyword(s):  
Drug Discovery ◽  
Genome Sequencing ◽  
De Novo ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Genetic Regulation ◽  
Combinatorial Biosynthesis ◽  
Industrial Biotechnology ◽  
Pathway Reconstruction ◽  
Experimental Pharmacology ◽  
Important Drug

AbstractSecondary natural products from plants are important drug leads for the development of new drug candidates for rational clinical therapy and exhibit a variety of biological activities in experimental pharmacology and serve as structural template in medicinal chemistry. The exploration of plants and discovery of natural compounds based on ethnopharmacology in combination with high sophisticated analytics is still today an important drug discovery to characterize and validate potential leads. Due to structural complexity, low abundance in biological material, and high costs in chemical synthesis, alternative ways in production like plant cell cultures, heterologous biosynthesis, and synthetic biotechnology are applied. The basis for any biotechnological process is deep knowledge in genetic regulation of pathways and protein expression with regard to todays “omics” technologies. The high number genetic techniques allowed the implementation of combinatorial biosynthesis and wide genome sequencing. Consequently, genetics allowed functional expression of biosynthetic cascades from plants and to reconstitute low-performing pathways in more productive heterologous microorganisms. Thus, de novo biosynthesis in heterologous hosts requires fundamental understanding of pathway reconstruction and multitude of genes in a foreign organism. Here, actual concepts and strategies are discussed for pathway reconstruction and genome sequencing techniques cloning tools to bridge the gap between ethnopharmaceutical drug discovery to industrial biotechnology.

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