Future Drugs May Be Manufactured by Mushroom Biofactories

Researchers have used advanced genetic engineering techniques to create transgenic mushrooms that may serve as biologic factories to produce drugs such as insulin.

Investigators at Pennsylvania State University (University Park, USA) worked with Agaricus bisporus, the predominant edible species of the button variety of mushrooms. The mushrooms were macerated, and cellular material was added to a solution containing Agrobacterium, an organism that produces a plasmid with the gene for resistance to the antibiotic hygromycin.

At certain points in its life cycle, Agrobacterium releases plasmids into the growth medium. Some of the mushroom cells incorporated the plasmid while others did not. The cell solution was then treated with hygromycin, which killed all the mushroom cells that failed to integrate the plasmid. The surviving cells then matured into adult mushrooms that expressed the hygromycin resistance gene. Had a second gene, such as the one for insulin, been included in the plasmid, the adult mushrooms would likely also have expressed it.

"We need a new way of mass-producing protein-based drugs, which is economical, safe, and fast,” said Dr. Charles Peter Romaine, professor of plant pathology at Pennsylvania State University. "We believe mushrooms are going to be the platform of the future. There has always been a recognized potential of the mushroom as being a choice platform for the mass production of commercially valuable proteins. Mushrooms could make the ideal vehicle for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals to treat a broad array of human illnesses. But nobody has been able to come up with a feasible way of doing that.”

To continue this line of research and eventually commercialize the mushroom biofactory concept, Prof. Romaine has co-founded Agariger, Inc., which has an exclusive license to develop the patented technology.


Related Links:
Pennsylvania State University