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Biotechnology and Biopharmaceuticals

Biotechnology and Biopharmaceuticals: Transforming Proteins and Genes into Drugs defines biotechnology from the perspective of pharmaceuticals. The first section focuses on the process of transforming a biologic macromolecule into a therapeutic agent, while the second section provides a brief overview of each class of macromolecule with respect to physiological role and clinical application. Additional detail is also provided in the second section for each FDA approved, recombinantly derived biopharmaceutical for each category of macromolecule. The final section looks to the future and the new advances that will enhance our ability to develop new macromolecules into effective biopharmaceuticals. This last section discusses various drug delivery strategies while also describing gene and cell therapy strategies.

The Regulatory Challenge of Biotechnology

Biotechnology has prompted a revolution in science and society in the truest sense of the word. For what superficially appears to be a revolution in biotechnology, in effect touches upon the fundamentals of life and the way in which humans relate to it. This book will make a significant contribution to the debate surrounding the effective regulation of biotechnology. The contributing authors assess how regulatory regimes can accommodate the many different and often conflicting issues to which biotechnology is giving rise to (including a very tainted public image). The book’s ultimate aim is to explore ways of designing a regulatory regime that takes heed of these different demands whilst, at the same time, answering to the imperatives of effectiveness and efficiency.

Flow Cytometry for Biotechnology

Flow cytometry is a sensitive and quantitative platform for the measurement of particle fluorescence. In flow cytometry, the particles in a sample flow in single file through a focused laser beam at rates of hundreds to thousands of particles per second. During the time each particle is in the laser beam, on the order of ten microseconds, one or more fluorescent dyes associated with that particle are excited. The fluorescence emitted from each particle is collected through a microscope objective, spectrally filtered, and detected with photomultiplier tubes. Flow cytometry is uniquely capable of the precise and quantitative molecular analysis of genomic sequence information, interactions between purified biomolecules and cellular function. Combined with automated sample handling for increased sample throughput, these features make flow cytometry a versatile platform with applications at many stages of drug discovery. Traditionally, the particles studied are cells, especially blood cells; flow cytometry is used extensively in immunology. This volume shows how flow cytometry is integrated into modern biotechnology, dealing with issues of throughput, content, sensitivity, and high throughput informatics with applications in genomics, proteomics and protein-protein interactions, drug discovery, vaccine development, plant and reproductive biology, pharmacology and toxicology, cell-cell interactions and protein engineering.