Synthetic Yeast Creates Malaria Drug

According to New Scientist, researchers in California are scaling up for industrial production a process to produce a synthetic strain of yeast engineered to produce a compound called artemisinin, which is used to treat malaria. The current process used to produce the medicine is expensive, but this new process has been optimized such that—within two to three years—they could produce enough of the drug to meet the needs of the entire world.

Attempts to use living organisms to produce medicines have been underway for several years now. If the artemisinin process being commercialized (by Sanofi-Aventis) is successful, it would be the first major production of medication using a synthetic organism.

New Method for Forming Tissues from Stem Cells

Bioengineering researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh and stem cell biologists from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have combined to create a new system for helping stem cells grow into complex tissue systems.

The research involves laying a foundation of nurturing proteins on a glass slide, which was then coated with a pattern of proteins specific to the type of tissue they were trying to create. Muscle-derived adult stem cells were added on top of the protein pattern, and derive into tissue. In this case, the stem cells derived into bone-like cells. A control group, not grown on the specialized protein pattern, derived into muscle-like cells.

Usable therapies are likely decades away, using this technique, but this research is an important first step.

Toward Better Replacement Organs

The University of Michigan Medical School reported this week on advances in a new technique designed for improved engineering of replacement organs.

The research, led by Ravi K. Birla, Ph.D., of the Artificial Heart Laboratory in U-M's Section of Cardiac Surgery and the U-M Cardiovascular Center, created bio-engineered heart muscle (BEHM) cells that generated pulsing forces and reacted more like natural heart muscles than any BEHM previously produced.

The three-dimensional tissue was grown using a new technique that is faster than others that have been tried in recent years, but still yields tissue with significantly better properties. The approach uses a fibrin gel to support rat cardiac cells temporarily, before the fibrin breaks down as the cells organize into tissue.

Read the U-M press release here.