Session 11 Drug discovery and biopharmaceuticals

• A biological macromolecule or cellular component, such as blood product, used as a pharmaceutical • A pharmaceutical derived from a biological source and especially one produced by biotechnology - biopharmaceutical
• • 1st Gen Bio-P:
  • Simple copies of human proteins
  • Put the appropriate part of the human genome into an expression system, harvest, purify and use.
  • 2nd Gen Bio-P:
  • Proteins that have undergone some form of ‘engineering’
  • Either a change to the genome prior to transfection, or a change to the purified product.
• Silencing RNA/short interfering RNA?

  • Short lengths of double stranded RNA induce an enzyme complex (RNA induced silencing complex, RISC)
  • This results in selective degradation of the corresponding mRNA