Engineering Quillaja saponin biosynthesis pathways for bio-production of QS-21

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Plants are a rich source of drugs and other high-value compounds. Morphine was the first plant drug to be purified and sold commercially and salicylic acid the first to be chemically synthesized. However, despite these and other successes, the vast majority of plant metabolic diversity has remained untapped due to the problems of accessing source species, purifying compounds and the challenges of chemical synthesis. We have established transient plant expression technology for the rapid reconstruction of plant metabolic pathways and demonstrated that this system can be used to access gram-scale quantities of products. This technology is readily scalable and has been used for commercial production of vaccines. The engineering and production of the highly potent Quillaja adjuvant QS-21 using the Hypertrans system will provide a flagship proof of concept to demonstrate the power of this platform for accessing high-value products from plants and pave the way for a new commercial venture.