Applications of recombinant Pichia pastoris in the healthcare industry

Since the 1970s, the establishment and development of the biotech industry has improved exponentially, allowing the commercial production of biopharmaceutical proteins. Nowadays, new recombinant protein production is considered a multibillion-dollar market, in which about 25% of commercial pharmaceuticals are biopharmaceuticals. But to achieve a competitive production process is not an easy task. Any production process has to be highly productive, efficient and economic. Despite that the perfect host is still not discovered, several research groups have chosen Pichia pastoris as expression system for the production of their protein because of its many features. The attempt of this review is to embrace several research lines that have adopted Pichia pastoris as their expression system to produce a protein on an industrial scale in the health care industry.

Establishment of Na+-glucose cotransporter 2 heterologous expression system in HEK293 cells / 中华肾脏病杂志

Objective To establish heterologous expression system of Na+-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) gene.Methods Human SGLT2 cDNA from normal kidney, generated by RT-PCR,was subclonedintoPEXL-GFP vector andtransfectedinto HEK293cells. After 24hours of incubation, the expression of SGLT2-GFP fusion protein was detected by Western blotting and laser confocal microscopy.Transport activity of SGLT2-GFP fusion proteins in cultured human HEK293 cells was evaluated with the uptake test of glucose analogue.ResultsSGLT2-GFP fusion protein was expressed in cultured human HEK293 cells.Furthermore, confocal microscopy using green fluorescent protein(GFP) revealed a punctate membrane pattern of SGLT2.Glucose analogue uptake increased in HEK293 cells transfected with SGLT2-GFP at least by 3.5 folds compared with HEK293 cells transfected with GFP vector only(P＜0.01).Conclusion Heterologous expression of SGLT2 gene in HEK293 cells is successfully established, which provides valuable approach for the functional and pathological study of SGLT2 gene.