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

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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.