BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
Revolutionary research into tree cells by the University on behalf of a South Korean corporation is set to improve the production of life-saving drugs
Bark up the right tree
South Korean biotechnology company Unhwa Corporation is extending its successful collaboration with the University to use systems biology approaches to understand how plant cells synthesise particular compounds – with particular focus on enhancing production of the cancer drug paclitaxel (Taxol) from yew tree cells. A diverse range of commercially important products are derived from plants, including medicines, pigments, insecticides and anti-microbials. However, establishing effective methods to extract these products from whole plants in a reproducible and cost-effective way is difficult and, as many of these products are chemically complex, synthesis can often be problematic and expensive. Culturing plant cells on an industrial scale brings further challenges, due to instabilities of the cell populations, poor growth rates and large variations in yield.
Unhwa has addressed this issue by developing a platform technology to isolate and culture a particular sub-population of plant cells – known as cambial meristematic cells (CMCs) in the laboratory and then harvest the desired products from the media in which they are growing. These cells were thought to be a type of plant stem cell, which meant they should be immortal and capable of being cultured indefinitely. If they did have these unique properties, they should be a
Work to test methods of extracting the plant equivalent of stem cells has focused initially on the yew tree (pictured left). These cells were successfully isolated and used to produce the cancer drug paclitaxel, thanks to the work of Professor Gary Loake (pictured above right)
much more reliable and economic source of plant-derived products.
Unhwa wanted scientific proof to confirm that the methods they had developed to isolate the plant stem cells definitely worked.
ON THE SMALL SCREEN
Unhwa’s work, resulting from its research collaboration with the
In other words, that the cells they were isolating had the signature characteristics and features of a plant stem cell. The first plant type the company chose to focus on was the yew tree – the bark of which is the source of the anti-cancer drug paclitaxel (Taxol). For that challenge, they needed the plant science expertise that a university such as Edinburgh has to offer. In 2006, after a conference meeting
University on plant stem cells, was featured in a documentary on the Discovery Channel in 2011.
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with Professor Gary Loake from the University’s School of Biological Sciences, Unhwa agreed to sponsor a PhD student in Professor Loake’s research lab in the Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences, under the BBSRC CASE studentship programme. This initial collaboration gave Unhwa access to expertise and equipment for high-throughput DNA sequencing, gene expression profiling and metabolic pathway analysis, as well as the computational expertise required to interpret and analyse the data that these techniques generate. The research programme used a number of sophisticated DNA and RNA sequencing methods to analyse the genome of the plant stem cells, as well as biochemical and cell biological analysis. As a result,
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