From Innovation to Application: Bridging the Valley of Death in Industrial Biotechnology

Combining enzyme and metabolic engineering for microbial supply of therapeutic phytochemicals

The history of pharmacology is deeply intertwined with plant-derived compounds, which continue to be crucial in drug development. However, their complex structures and limited availability in plants challenge drug discovery, optimization, development, and industrial production via chemical synthesis or natural extraction. This review delves into the integration of metabolic and enzyme engineering to leverage micro-organisms as platforms for the sustainable and reliable production of therapeutic phytochemicals. We argue that engineered microbes can serve a triple role in this paradigm: facilitating pathway discovery, acting as cell factories for scalable manufacturing, and functioning as platforms for chemical derivatization. Analyzing recent progress and outlining future directions, the review highlights microbial biotechnology's transformative potential in expanding plant-derived human therapeutics' discovery and supply chains.

Standardized guidelines for Africanized honeybee venom production needed for development of new apilic antivenom

Africanized bees have spread across the Americas since 1956 and consequently resulted in human and animal deaths attributed to massive attacks related to exposure from Argentina to the USA. In Brazil, more than 100,000 accidents were registered in the last 5 years with a total of 303 deaths. To treat such massive attacks, Brazilian researchers developed the first specific antivenom against Africanized honey bee sting exposure. This unique product, the first of its kind in the world, has been safely tested in 20 patients during a Phase 2 clinical trial. To develop the antivenom, a standardized process was undertaken to extract primary venom antigens from the Africanized bees for immunization of serum-producing horses. This process involved extracting, purifying, fractionating, characterizing, and identifying the venom (apitoxin) employing mass spectrometry to generate standardized antigen for hyperimmunization of horses using the major toxins (melittin and its isoforms and phospholipase A2). The current guide describes standardization of the entire production chain of venom antigens in compliance with good manufacturing practices (GMP) required by regulatory agencies. Emphasis is placed upon the welfare of bees and horses during this process, as well as the development of a new biopharmaceutical to ultimately save lives.

Milligrams to kilograms: making microbes work at scale

If biomanufacturing can become a sustainable route for producing chemicals, it will provide a critical step in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change. However, efforts to industrialize microbial synthesis of chemicals have met with varied success, due, in part, to challenges in translating laboratory successes to industrial scale. With a particular focus on Escherichia coli, this review examines the lessons learned when studying microbial physiology and metabolism under conditions that simulate large-scale bioreactors and methods to minimize cellular waste through reduction of maintenance energy, optimizing the stress response and minimizing culture heterogeneity. With general strategies to overcome these challenges, biomanufacturing process scale-up could be de-risked and the time and cost of bringing promising syntheses to market could be reduced.

Pharmaceutical Scientists' Perspectives on Capacity Building in Pharmaceutical Sciences

With the anticipated health challenges brought by demographic and technological changes, ensuring capacity in underlying workforce in place is essential for addressing patients' needs. Therefore, a timely identification of important drivers facilitating capacity building is important for strategic decisions and workforce planning. In 2020, internationally renowned pharmaceutical scientists (N = 92), largely from the academia and pharmaceutical industry, with mostly pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences educational background were approached (through a questionnaire) for their considerations on influencing drivers to facilitate meeting current capacity in pharmaceutical sciences research. From a global view, based on the results of the questionnaire, the top drivers were better alignment with patient needs as well as strengthening education - both through continuous learning and deeper specialisation. The study also showed that capacity building is more than simply increasing the influx of graduates. Pharmaceutical sciences are being influenced by other disciplines, and we can expect more diversity in scientific background and training. Capacity building of pharmaceutical scientists should allow flexibility for rapid change driven by the clinic and need for specialised science and it should be underpinned by lifelong learning.

Concept of an Enzymatic Reactive Extraction Centrifuge

Biocatalytic processes often provide an ecological alternative to many chemical processes. However, further improvements in terms of the economic efficiency are required. In order to achieve that, the concept of process integration is a promising option. Applying this within a biocatalytic process, a highly integrated apparatus working as a reactive extraction centrifuge was developed and operated. For this purpose, a commercially available extraction centrifuge was modified to implement a biocatalytic reaction. The novel apparatus was used within a multi-enzyme cascade for the production of a natural flavor and fragrance, namely cinnamic ester. The characterization of the reactive extraction centrifuge and the suitable operation conditions for the inlet streams and the rotational speed for a stable operation were determined. Furthermore, different initial substrate concentrations were applied to prove the reaction. The results provide a successful proof of concept for the novel reactive extraction centrifuge.

Nanotechnology from lab to industry - a look at current trends

Nanotechnology holds great promise and is hyped by many as the next industrial evolution. Medicine, food and cosmetics, agriculture and environmental health, and technology industries already profit from nanotechnology innovations and their influence is expected to increase drastically in the near future. However, there are also many challenges that need to be overcome to bring a nanotechnological product or business to the market. In this article we discuss current examples of nanotechnology that have been successfully introduced in the market and their relevance and geographical spread. We then discuss different partners for scientists and their role in the commercialization process. Finally, we review the different steps it takes to bring a nanotechnology to the market, highlight the many difficulties related to these steps, and provide a roadmap for the journey from lab to industry which can be beneficial to researchers.

Designing Microbial Cell Factories for the Production of Chemicals

The sustainable production of chemicals from renewable, nonedible biomass has emerged as an essential alternative to address pressing environmental issues arising from our heavy dependence on fossil resources. Microbial cell factories are engineered microorganisms harboring biosynthetic pathways streamlined to produce chemicals of interests from renewable carbon sources. The biosynthetic pathways for the production of chemicals can be defined into three categories with reference to the microbial host selected for engineering: native-existing pathways, nonnative-existing pathways, and nonnative-created pathways. Recent trends in leveraging native-existing pathways, discovering nonnative-existing pathways, and designing de novo pathways (as nonnative-created pathways) are discussed in this Perspective. We highlight key approaches and successful case studies that exemplify these concepts. Once these pathways are designed and constructed in the microbial cell factory, systems metabolic engineering strategies can be used to improve the performance of the strain to meet industrial production standards. In the second part of the Perspective, current trends in design tools and strategies for systems metabolic engineering are discussed with an eye toward the future. Finally, we survey current and future challenges that need to be addressed to advance microbial cell factories for the sustainable production of chemicals.

A Review on the Production of C4 Platform Chemicals from Biochemical Conversion of Sugar Crop Processing Products and By-Products

The development and commercialization of sustainable chemicals from agricultural products and by-products is necessary for a circular economy built on renewable natural resources. Among the largest contributors to the final cost of a biomass conversion product is the cost of the initial biomass feedstock, representing a significant challenge in effective biomass utilization. Another major challenge is in identifying the correct products for development, which must be able to satisfy the need for both low-cost, drop-in fossil fuel replacements and novel, high-value fine chemicals (and/or commodity chemicals). Both challenges can be met by utilizing wastes or by-products from biomass processing, which have very limited starting cost, to yield platform chemicals. Specifically, sugar crop processing (e.g., sugarcane, sugar beet) is a mature industry that produces high volumes of by-products with significant potential for valorization. This review focuses specifically on the production of acetoin (3-hydroxybutanone), 2,3-butanediol, and C4 dicarboxylic (succinic, malic, and fumaric) acids with emphasis on biochemical conversion and targeted upgrading of sugar crop products/by-products. These C4 compounds are easily derived from fermentations and can be converted into many different final products, including food, fragrance, and cosmetic additives, as well as sustainable biofuels and other chemicals. State-of-the-art literature pertaining to optimization strategies for microbial conversion of sugar crop byproducts to C4 chemicals (e.g., bagasse, molasses) is reviewed, along with potential routes for upgrading and valorization. Directions and opportunities for future research and industrial biotechnology development are discussed.

Enzyme-constrained models predict the dynamics of Saccharomyces cerevisiae growth in continuous, batch and fed-batch bioreactors

Genome‐scale, constraint‐based models (GEM) and their derivatives are commonly used to model and gain insights into microbial metabolism. Often, however, their accuracy and predictive power are limited and enable only approximate designs. To improve their usefulness for strain and bioprocess design, we studied here their capacity to accurately predict metabolic changes in response to operational conditions in a bioreactor, as well as intracellular, active reactions. We used flux balance analysis (FBA) and dynamic FBA (dFBA) to predict growth dynamics of the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae under different industrially relevant conditions. We compared simulations with the latest developed GEM for this organism (Yeast8) and its enzyme‐constrained version (ecYeast8) herein described with experimental data and found that ecYeast8 outperforms Yeast8 in all the simulations. EcYeast8 was able to predict well‐known traits of yeast metabolism including the onset of the Crabtree effect, the order of substrate consumption during mixed carbon cultivation and production of a target metabolite. We showed how the combination of ecGEM and dFBA links reactor operation and genetic modifications to flux predictions, enabling the prediction of yields and productivities of different strains and (dynamic) production processes. Additionally, we present flux sampling as a tool to analyse flux predictions of ecGEM, of major importance for strain design applications. We showed that constraining protein availability substantially improves accuracy of the description of the metabolic state of the cell under dynamic conditions. This therefore enables more realistic and faithful designs of industrially relevant cell‐based processes and, thus, the usefulness of such models.

Changes in Oxygen Availability during Glucose-Limited Chemostat Cultivations of Penicillium chrysogenum Lead to Rapid Metabolite, Flux and Productivity Responses

Bioreactor scale-up from the laboratory scale to the industrial scale has always been a pivotal step in bioprocess development. However, the transition of a bioeconomy from innovation to commercialization is often hampered by performance loss in titer, rate and yield. These are often ascribed to temporal variations of substrate and dissolved oxygen (for instance) in the environment, experienced by microorganisms at the industrial scale. Oscillations in dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration are not uncommon. Furthermore, these fluctuations can be exacerbated with poor mixing and mass transfer limitations, especially in fermentations with filamentous fungus as the microbial cell factory. In this work, the response of glucose-limited chemostat cultures of an industrial Penicillium chrysogenum strain to different dissolved oxygen levels was assessed under both DO shift-down (60% → 20%, 10% and 5%) and DO ramp-down (60% → 0% in 24 h) conditions. Collectively, the results revealed that the penicillin productivity decreased as the DO level dropped down below 20%, while the byproducts, e.g., 6-oxopiperidine-2-carboxylic acid (OPC) and 6-aminopenicillanic acid (6APA), accumulated. Following DO ramp-down, penicillin productivity under DO shift-up experiments returned to its maximum value in 60 h when the DO was reset to 60%. The result showed that a higher cytosolic redox status, indicated by NADH/NAD+, was observed in the presence of insufficient oxygen supply. Consistent with this, flux balance analysis indicated that the flux through the glyoxylate shunt was increased by a factor of 50 at a DO value of 5% compared to the reference control, favoring the maintenance of redox status. Interestingly, it was observed that, in comparison with the reference control, the penicillin productivity was reduced by 25% at a DO value of 5% under steady state conditions. Only a 14% reduction in penicillin productivity was observed as the DO level was ramped down to 0. Furthermore, intracellular levels of amino acids were less sensitive to DO levels at DO shift-down relative to DO ramp-down conditions; this difference could be caused by different timescales between turnover rates of amino acid pools (tens of seconds to minutes) and DO switches (hours to days at steady state and minutes to hours at ramp-down). In summary, this study showed that changes in oxygen availability can lead to rapid metabolite, flux and productivity responses, and dynamic DO perturbations could provide insight into understanding of metabolic responses in large-scale bioreactors.

Expectations for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Psychiatry

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often presented as a transformative technology for clinical medicine even though the current technology maturity of AI is low. The purpose of this narrative review is to describe the complex reasons for the low technology maturity and set realistic expectations for the safe, routine use of AI in clinical medicine.

RECENT FINDINGS

For AI to be productive in clinical medicine, many diverse factors that contribute to the low maturity level need to be addressed. These include technical problems such as data quality, dataset shift, black-box opacity, validation and regulatory challenges, and human factors such as a lack of education in AI, workflow changes, automation bias, and deskilling. There will also be new and unanticipated safety risks with the introduction of AI. The solutions to these issues are complex and will take time to discover, develop, validate, and implement. However, addressing the many problems in a methodical manner will expedite the safe and beneficial use of AI to augment medical decision making in psychiatry.

Launching a CDMO in Brazil aiming to develop biopharmaceuticals for clinical trials

The innovation timeline is expensive, risky, competitive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive. In order to overcome such challenges and optimize financial resources, pharmaceutical companies nowadays hire contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMO) to help them. Based on the experience acquired first from the development of two biopharmaceuticals, the Heterologous Fibrin Sealant and the Apilic Antivenom, and more recently, during their respective clinical trials; the Center for the Study of Venoms and Venomous Animals (CEVAP) proposed to the Ministry of Health the creation of the first Brazilian CDMO. This groundbreaking venture will assist in converting a candidate molecule - from its discovery, proof of concept, product development, up to pilot batch production - into a product. The CDMO impact and legacy will be immense, offering service provision to the public and private sector by producing validated samples for clinical trials and academic training on translational research for those seeking a position in pharmaceutical industries and manufacturing platforms.