Lab2Market NSERC I2I Market Assessment of positive pombe: engineering anti-depressant molecules in fission yeast

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We are developing a synthetic biology platform for biologically important molecule production in fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe). This Lab2Market I2I Market Assessment program allows us to assess our technology and offering within the current market. We examine our primary research/technology development, expanding on a general customer-based survey in the Lab2Market Mitacs program. Our initial molecule of interest is psilocybin. Psilocybin is a potential compound to treat depression, addiction, and anxiety. It would be an alternative to other pharmaceutical drugs. Psilocybin is related to naturally occurring molecules found in cells, and results from a chemical conversion in Psylocibe mushrooms. However, extracting and purifying psilocybin from mushrooms leads to variable products, and large-scale extraction is not possible. Chemical synthesis is possible but expensive. We will use enzymes from the mushroom and express them in fission yeast cells. These yeast cultures provide an opportunity for consistent and high- yield synthesis from starting media. Long-term, we eliminate the time, space, and labor-intensive method of harvesting mushrooms, and the cost-intensive method of psilocybin chemical synthesis from expensive starting materials. In the future, we expect that this will allow us to generate other related compounds effective in an optimized synthetic biology platform, and with linked market considerations.