Nature is an important source of bioactive products, and therefore often a source of new therapeutics; over the last 30 years most anticancer, anti-infective and anti-bacterial drugs originated from natural sources, like plants, fungi or bacteria, and their derivatives. But developing a new therapeutic is time-consuming, expensive and challenging; it can take 10 to 15 years from target identification to approval, and cost as much as $2.9 billion per drug, with only 1 in 5,000 targets making it to market.
Synthetic biology can aid the design of new therapeutics in two broad ways, says [professor of experimental anatomy Dr. Jamie] Davies: “One is epitomized by CAR T cells used to treat cancer: engineering human cells to have new properties that are useful, for example, the ability to mount a ferocious attack on a patient’s tumor, and put them back into the body to do that job.”
The second way that synthetic biology can aid drug discovery, says Davies, is engineering cells to perform the physiological role of another, for example, non-pancreatic cells to make insulin in response to blood sugar. This application is currently experimental and not yet used in humans.
