Biopharmaceuticals Flashcards
What are pharmaceuticals?
Drugs used to diagnose, prevent, treat or cure disease
What is a biotechnology medicine/product?
Pharmaceutical product used for therapeutic or in vivo diagnostics, produced in full or in part by modern biotechnological means (include antibiotics extracted from fungi; insulin from pig pancreas or recombinant insulin)
Give examples of products which are from a animal origin
Antibodies, enzymes, hormones, blood factors, growth factors, cytokines
Give examples of products which are form a plant origin
aspirin, alkaloids, digitalis, quinine
Give example of products form a microbial origin
vaccines, antibiotics, toxins/toxoids
What are biopharmaceutical proteins or nucleic acids?
based pharmaceuticals that are used for therapeutic or in vivo diagnostics, produced by means other than direct extraction from native biological source
Give examples of pharmaceuticals from chemical synthesis?
Paracetamol (acetaminophen), ketamine, acyclovir
Give examples of pharmaceuticals from biological extraction
Factor VIII, insulin, alkaloids (morphine), antibiotics, vaccines, antibodies (passive immunity), thrombolytic agents
Give examples of some biopharmaceuticals
Factor VIII, insulin, vaccines, antibodies (e.g. monoclonal), thrombolytic agents
What are the advantages of biopharmaceuticals?
Overcomes issue of source availability (e.g. Cytokines)
Improves product safety (e.g. Blood products – HIV, hepatitis, CJD)
Alternative to extraction (e.g. Insulin from slaughterhouses, hormones from urine)
Engineering of more effective therapeutic proteins (e.g. Insulin, Factor VIII)
What region of a chromosome is the encoding region?
euchromatic gene
What fraction of the genome is transcribed into RNA?
1/3
What % of RNA is believed to produce proteins?
~5%
What are bioinformatics used for?
to identify functional sequence motifs (e.g. catalytic sites, transmembrane regions) by homology to other known genes (homologues), even in different species (orthologues)
What are knock-out animals?
generation of animals in which the study gene is deleted – observation of phenotype can Often reveal role of gene product
What are the different variations in gene expression between cells?
different cell types - stage in organisms development - phase of cell cycle - response to internal and external (i.e. environmental) factors
What are gene chips?
study of differential RNA expression (transcriptome) in different cells/conditions (e.g. Expression in cancer cell may provide drug target)
What are proteomics?
Proteomics: analysis of cellular protein expression (proteome)
What are structural genomics?
3D protein analysis (NMR) – structure may predict function
What is pharmacogenomics?
correlation of gene sequences to drug response
Determine which drugs (& dose) to give which individuals – benefits v side effects
What do pharmacogenomics look at?
mutations and polymorhisms (single nucleotide polymorphisms – SNPs)
what are most BPs produced by?
genetic engineering using recombinant expression systems
What are the steps of using recombinant expression systems?
First - identification and isolation of therapeutic gene/custom synthesis
Molecular cloning into vectors (e.g. plasmids, viruses)
Propagation (maybe protein expression) in cell lines
Purifying products (DNA, protein, vector)
What is used to clone mRNA into cDNA?
produced using retrovirus reverse transcriptase
