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

我们正在开发一个合成生物学平台，用于在分裂酵母(Schizosaccharmyces Pombe)中生产具有重要生物学意义的分子。这项Lab2Market I2I市场评估计划使我们能够评估我们在当前市场中的技术和产品。我们检查了我们的主要研究/技术开发，在Lab2Market Mitacs计划中展开了基于客户的一般调查。我们最初感兴趣的分子是裸盖菇素。裸盖菇素是一种潜在的治疗抑郁症、成瘾和焦虑的化合物。它将成为其他药物的替代药物。裸盖菇素与细胞中自然存在的分子有关，是木霉中化学转化的结果。然而，从蘑菇中提取和纯化裸盖菇素导致产品多种多样，不可能大规模提取。化学合成是可能的，但成本很高。我们将使用蘑菇中的酶，并在分裂酵母细胞中表达它们。这些酵母菌培养物提供了从起始培养基进行一致和高产合成的机会。从长远来看，我们淘汰了采集蘑菇的时间、空间和劳动力密集型的方法，以及由昂贵的原料化学合成裸盖菇素的成本密集型方法。在未来，我们预计这将使我们能够在一个优化的合成生物学平台上有效地产生其他相关化合物，并与相关的市场考虑相联系。

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.