Recent Patents on Biotechnology - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2009

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are gaining importance due to their “generally recognized as safe” status, long-term use in food and beneficial, probiotic properties. They can acquire new, desirable traits by the incorporation of genes that allow the expression of heterologous proteins, and several patents and patent applications describe the use of recombinant LAB. We first focus on the available expression systems, their improve Read More

Peroxidases are hemoenzymes with a wide range of applications, from fine chemical synthesis to environmental biocatalysis. These outstanding biocatalysts are able to catalyze reactions such as heteroatom oxidation (Nand S-oxidation), epoxidation, hydroxylation, and the oxidation of alcohols and indole, often giving high yields and enantiomeric excess values. This makes these biocatalysts very useful for application to Read More

Launching a new drug on the market is an extremely time-consuming and expensive process. The total costs from the lab bench to the patient's bedside are in the range of $800 million for each new compound. Innovative preclinical assays are urgently needed to select the most promising drug candidates. High-throughput molecular screening does not provide information on the effects on cellular functions. Testing on anim Read More

As cosmetic technology advances, there is an increasing need to use new active ingredients in the development of cosmetic products. In the last few years application of fullerene C60 and its derivates in cosmetics has been intensively tested. Fullerenes display a wide range of biological activities. Potent scavenging capacities against radical oxygen species (ROS) and excellent potential as biological antioxidants made fulle Read More

This review provides a broad overview of recent patents and developments in the field of small scale bioreactors. The scope of the work will focus on vessels from about 500 ml down to the submilliliter scale. This field of research is of acknowledged relevance, since the rational use of these devices is contributing to speeding up several areas of bioprocessing, in particular due to their intrinsic capability for high throughput. Wi Read More

About 300 of steroid drugs have been identified since the research and development to steroid drugs was triggered in 1950's. Although much progress in microbial biotransformation on steroid drugs is well-achieved, many efforts are ongoing in order to improve the efficiency of steroidal drug production as well as to degrade their derivatives. In this work an overview of recent and important findings related to patents and Read More

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