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

植物已经进化成产生大量复杂的化学结构，以抵御草食动物和病原体的攻击，并保护自己免受往往是恶劣环境的伤害。这些化学结构还为植物提供了人类文明几千年来一直依赖的药用特性。我们现在知道了导致这些药用特性的化学物质的身份。制药业已经使用这些化学结构直接从植物衍生的化学物质中开发药物，或者通过化学合成模拟植物化学物质的相关结构来开发药物。利用植物作为工业用高价值化学品的可持续来源，已被英国政府视为下一个十年增长的关键领域。这一交流计划将在总部设在英国的全球制药公司葛兰素史克和约克大学之间建立更紧密的互动。约克大学拥有大量植物生物化学、新型作物开发、绿色化学和工业生物技术方面的研究人员。具体目标包括确定用于高价值化学品的新的植物来源原料，评估使用生物催化和发酵过程改变化学结构和降低投入的技术平台，以及从各种植物原料中提取和加工化学品的更可持续的平台。交流还旨在培训学术人员和学生，了解业界选择发展目标和项目的做法，并提高对产学研合作如何运作以实现互利的认识，使学术界的出版需求和产业界保护知识产权的需求得到满足。知识和技术还将通过交易所从学术界转移到行业，还将通过在有组织的研讨会上与公司的关键意见形成者直接接触，以及学者对行业的后续访问来实现。交换的最终成功将通过制药部门从植物中吸收高价值化学品的增加以及对政府愿景的总体贡献来衡量，即英国到2025年成为来自植物的高价值化学品的前三大生产国。

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.