Opioids Narcotic Drugs could soon be manufactured using yeast.

[g.bentham]

In this fascinating article from the Economist (possibly gated), Christina Smolke of Stanford University shows how by using new tools in synthetic biology, she has been able to grow narcotic agents like Codeine and Morphine out of yeast culture. This should bode well for the future.

Link:

http://www.economist.com/news/scien...uld-soon-be-manufactured-yeast-new-opium-pipe

 

[lolwhatzdrugs]

Bode well for getting bread scheduled.

 

[pinpoint]

Great so theoretically Monsanto can control the drug trade too. Can't wait to see how that bodes.

 

[lolwhatzdrugs]

Great so theoretically Monsanto can control the drug trade too. Can't wait to see how that bodes.

Monsanto=Stanford University?

Actually it could be if you looked into and they funded her research.


Did they?

Nope. Currently funded from the NIH.

Christina Smolke, PhD, associate professor of bioengineering, has won a Director's Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health. The award includes a five-year, $2.5 million grant to be used in highly innovative approaches that have the potential to affect a broad area of biomedical or behavioral research.

Smolke will use her Pioneer Award funding to explore the use of synthetic biology platforms and biosynthesis strategies—the use of microbes to produce complex chemicals—to dramatically advance natural-product drugs. Natural products, and compounds inspired by them, make up the bulk of successful drugs, but challenges to their discovery, synthesis and manufacture limit the number of candidates that can be seriously explored and tested as drugs.

Smolke's approaches could transform the manufacturing scale and efficiency of these microbial systems and make possible the synthesis of an important class of molecules exhibiting diverse pharmacological activities.

"We're working on the tools that will lead to new capabilities for probing natural biosynthetic pathways and shed light on nature's biosynthesis processes. Ultimately, this will lead us to the discovery and scalable synthesis of new and desperately needed therapeutic molecules," said Smolke.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

I'm not seeing what this has to do with monsanto? Theoretically any individual or biotechnology company can patent a new genetic build that they created from what I understand.


She could very well patent it.

Or maybe she can't, and nobody can as this research was financed by the NIH and they might own, or can prevent her from monetizing the results.

 

[pinpoint]

Huh? I just seen something like synthetic biology and instantly thought of that corporation.. that was all. No insinuations or interpretations needed

 

[lolwhatzdrugs]

Also the article posted is from the economist, here is what Stanford's engineering department said: http://engineering.stanford.edu/new...ewing-painkillers-without-using-opium-poppies

 

[lolwhatzdrugs]

Huh? I just seen something like synthetic biology and instantly thought of that corporation.. that was all. No insinuations or interpretations needed

You mean inferences, or interpretations needed? I didn't insinuate anything about you, I was just wondering how you thought they were linked, and saying I didn't really see it.


Anywayyyy

This is a bit (kinda) different. Monsanto generally has been bioengineering plants (food stuff, plants important to industry) to be more hardy, less susceptible to bugs, resistant to weed killer, etc.

This lady is trying to use bioengineered yeast to actually produce drugs. Their goals are a bit different.

Dr. Smolke's research is cooler. In countries like India where they barely have a fraction of the necessary amounts of narcotics (even for terminal care), this could be quite important.

What Smolke's team has done is to carefully reprogram the yeast genome – the master instruction set that tells every organism how to live – to behave like a poppy when it comes to making opiates.

The process involved more than simply adding new genes into yeast. Opioid molecules are complex three-dimensional objects. In nature they are made in specific regions inside the poppy. Since yeast cells do not have these complex structures and tissues, the Stanford team had to recreate the equivalent of poppy-like "chemical neighborhoods" inside the bioengineered yeast cells.

About 17 separate chemical steps are required to make the opioid compounds used in pills. Some of these steps occur naturally in poppies, and the rest occur through synthetic chemical processes in factories. Smolke's team wanted all the steps to happen inside yeast cells within a single vat, including using yeast to carry out chemical processes that poppies never evolved to perform – such as refining opiates like thebaine into more valuable semi-synthetic opioids like oxycodone.

So Smolke programmed her bioengineered yeast to perform these final industrial steps as well. To do this she endowed the yeast with genes from a bacterium that feeds on dead poppy stalks. Because she wanted to produce several different opioids, her team hacked the yeast genome in slightly different ways to produce each of the slightly different opioid formulations, such as oxycodone or hydrocodone.

Crazy. Her next problem is instead of using thebaine as a feed stock, or poppy straw, being able to go from sugar->(Whatever, I started looking at the steps... there's a lot at least 7 different enzymes powered by ATP/NADPH)->thebaine->oxymorphone

Awesome. Sugar in, oxymorphone, or diamorphine, or any of those alkaloids or semi-synthetics.

The real breakthrough will be making fully synthetics in yeast, there are no enzymes or metabolic pathways in any plants in order to create methadone, or certain cancer medications.

 

[sekio]

The real breakthrough will be making fully synthetics in yeast,

Yeast suck compared to industrial-scale synthetic chemistry... I'm sure people can make 200 kilos of methadone much faster than yeast can.

It's still neat being able to make opiates in much less space than a whole poppy field. The yields and isolation will probably be sucky and tedious initially, but there's always room for optimization...

 

[HdoubleODeezy]

I have a yeast infection.. anyone wanna grow opiates off me?

 

[lolwhatzdrugs]

Yeast suck compared to industrial-scale synthetic chemistry... I'm sure people can make 200 kilos of methadone much faster than yeast can.

It's still neat being able to make opiates in much less space than a whole poppy field. The yields and isolation will probably be sucky and tedious initially, but there's always room for optimization...

I thought I remember reading that stereoselective pseudoephedrine was fermented by some bacterium for industrial production? Quick check and I couldn't find it but I swear I remember thinking 'thats kinda crazy!'

 

[Ksa]

The goal of these advances in chemical synthesis/bio-synthesis is obviously to render narcotics available to every man woman and child without requiring any funds nor a prescription of course. There will be a natural selection, many people will OD and die but there will always be a fair amount of population who will use at will without endangering themselves.

I see this as...evolution. The dinosaur is left behind and the new (superior) species evolve. Humans right now are like a printer with just an On/Off button. They can only sleep and wake up. You imagine how much money you would pay on a printer like that...no way to alter any settings whatsoever. If it's in a bad mood it prints junk, if it's in a good mood it prints black and white. It's a worthless tool.

 

[lolwhatzdrugs]

The goal of these advances in chemical synthesis/bio-synthesis is obviously to render narcotics available to every man woman and child

EXACTLY! What else could mankind possibly do with complex pharmecutical molecules synthesized by manipulating natural biosynthesis pathways of microorganisms?



Make hard to synthesize drugs which are prohibitively expensive? Provide morphine yeast to poor countries that have disproportionate amounts of pain relievers in palliative care?

NAH! TO GET EVERYBODY FUCKED UP!

 

[hoopy]

funny thing is all these people with fake Coeliac disease which only effects less than 1% of of the population with be crying.

 

[sekio]

The goal of these advances in chemical synthesis/bio-synthesis is obviously to render narcotics available to every man woman and child without requiring any funds nor a prescription of course.

Lol. What have you been smoking recently? (Either way, this is achievable with today's technology. It wouldn't be too far fetched to make enough fentanyl or analog to dose everyone.)

A far more likely reason for this project is twofold, 1. develop technology that will increase the yield of opium producers through genetic engineering, and 2. provide an easily secured environment to produce opioids in.

The latter is kind of important, the overall cost to produce opioids would go down significantly if you could make them in an unmarked warehouse in a technology park somewhere, instead of needing to rent and secure a fucking field suitable for a poppy farm.

The end result is going to be just more profit for the opioid manufacturers though. I wouldn't hold your breath for cheaper opioids nor a sudden reversal of controlled substance policy.

 

[dirzted]

Lol. What have you been smoking recently? (Either way, this is achievable with today's technology. It wouldn't be too far fetched to make enough fentanyl or analog to dose everyone.)

A far more likely reason for this project is twofold, 1. develop technology that will increase the yield of opium producers through genetic engineering, and 2. provide an easily secured environment to produce opioids in.

The latter is kind of important, the overall cost to produce opioids would go down significantly if you could make them in an unmarked warehouse in a technology park somewhere, instead of needing to rent and secure a fucking field suitable for a poppy farm.

The end result is going to be just more profit for the opioid manufacturers though. I wouldn't hold your breath for cheaper opioids nor a sudden reversal of controlled substance policy.

Dude you know fucking everything about everything.

 

[Ksa]

Lol. What have you been smoking recently? (Either way, this is achievable with today's technology. It wouldn't be too far fetched to make enough fentanyl or analog to dose everyone.)

A far more likely reason for this project is twofold, 1. develop technology that will increase the yield of opium producers through genetic engineering, and 2. provide an easily secured environment to produce opioids in.

The latter is kind of important, the overall cost to produce opioids would go down significantly if you could make them in an unmarked warehouse in a technology park somewhere, instead of needing to rent and secure a fucking field suitable for a poppy farm.

The end result is going to be just more profit for the opioid manufacturers though. I wouldn't hold your breath for cheaper opioids nor a sudden reversal of controlled substance policy.

I'll tell you what I mean. I mean that the drug laws will become like the digital millennium copyright laws, prohibiting unauthorized viewing. This means that the law is there, it is active, but it's simply not enforceable, due to the Internet and the broad band services, for example. With the new technology that we will have in the future, getting a drug will be easier than downloading the latest batman movie illegally. Just click, print, atomize and that's it.

 

[red22]

My question is how feasible is it for the everyday person to make a setup like this?


A microbial biomanufacturing platform for natural and semisynthetic opioids
Kate Thodey, Stephanie Galanie & Christina D Smolke
Nature Chemical Biology, Aug 24, 2014
doi:10.1038/nchembio.1613
Will provide download later