13TSB_SynBio:Enhanced discovery and scalable synthesis of therapeutic cyclic peptides

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Natural products often have very desirable biological and material properties. In the future there will be immense pressure to produce economically valuable materials with much reduced environmental impact. This means the Industrial Biotechnology sector (which is related to, but distinct from the Pharmaceutical Industry) in the UK has a golden opportunity to harness world class science. This proposal links first class academic science with unique expertise available in an innovative small company, Ingenza. The main aim of the project is to develop a bacterial system (cell factory) for the production of novel customizable and highly modified cyclic peptides in significant quantities. Cyclic peptides are found as antibiotics, anticancer agents, in hormone therapy and in immune system modifying agents. In addition to their direct medicinal role, they are also very useful tools in studying biological processes, this second role, as tools, is underdeveloped simply because natural products are hard to make in sufficient amounts. The proposed work will solve these problems by providing a plug 'n' play system in which changes can be made simply and quickly to the 'cell factory' to produce a vast array of cyclic peptides at a useful scale.