FLIP: Developing biorenewables based feedstock and clean chemistry technologies for the pharmaceutical industry

植物已经进化出大量复杂的化学结构，以抵御食草动物和病原体的攻击，并保护自己免受恶劣环境的侵害。这些化学结构也为植物提供了人类文明几千年来所依赖的药用特性。我们现在知道了这些具有药用特性的化学物质的身份。制药工业利用这些化学结构直接从植物衍生的化学物质或通过化学合成模仿植物化学物质的相关结构来开发药物。利用植物作为工业高价值化学品的可持续来源已被英国政府视为未来十年增长的关键领域。这个交流项目将在总部设在英国的全球制药公司葛兰素史克（GlaxoSmithKline）和约克大学（University of York）之间建立更密切的互动。约克大学在植物生物化学、新作物开发、绿色化学和工业生物技术方面拥有大量的研究人员。具体目标包括确定用于高价值化学品的新植物衍生原料，评估使用生物催化和发酵工艺来修改化学结构的技术平台，以及更低投入，更可持续的从各种植物原料中提取和加工化学品的平台。该交流还旨在培训学术人员和学生，使他们了解工业界选择发展目标和项目的做法，并提高对工业-学术伙伴关系如何运作以实现互利的认识，从而满足学术界出版的需要和工业界保护知识产权的需要。知识和技术也将从学术界转移到工业界，通过交换者，也通过在有组织的研讨会上与公司的主要意见领袖直接接触，以及学者对工业界的后续访问。交换的最终成功将通过制药部门增加对工厂高价值化学品的吸收以及对英国政府到2025年成为前三大工厂高价值化学品生产国的总体贡献来衡量。

Plants have evolved to produce a vast array of complex chemical structures to fight off attacks from herbivores and pathogens and to protect themselves from often hostile environments. These chemical structures also provide plants with medicinal properties that human civilisation has relied on for millennia. We now know the identity of the chemicals responsible for a number of these medicinal properties. The pharmaceutical industry has used these chemical structures to develop drugs either directly from the plant derived chemicals or by chemically synthesising related structures that mimic the plant chemical. The use of plants as a sustainable source of high value chemicals for industry has been recognised by the UK government as a key area for growth in the next decade. This interchange programme will establish much closer interactions between GlaxoSmithKline, a global pharmaceutical company headquartered in the UK, and the University of York, which has a critical mass of researchers in plant biochemistry, novel crop development, green chemistry and industrial biotechnology. Specific objectives include the identification of new plant derived feedstocks for high value chemicals, evaluation of technology platforms that use biocatalysis and fermentation based processes to modify chemical structures and lower input, more sustainable platforms for extraction and processing of chemicals from various plant feedstocks. The interchange also aims to train academic staff and students in the practices used by industry to select targets and projects for development and to increase awareness of how industry-academic partnerships can operate to mutual gain, allowing both the need of academia to publish and the need of industry to protect intellectual property to be met. Knowledge and technology will also move from academia to industry through the interchanger and also by direct engagement with key opinion formers from the company in an organised workshop, and follow up visits to industry by academics. Ultimate success of the interchange will be measured through the increased uptake of high value chemicals from plants by the pharmaceutical sector and overall contribution to the Government vision of the UK becoming a top 3 producer of high value chemicals from plants by 2025.