Researchers Produced Opioids From Baker’s Yeast

The poppies must be harvested from farms in countries that are licensed to grow them – such as Australia and parts of Europe – and processed, before being shipped to pharmaceutical factories in the US.

It would take 4,400 gallons of yeast to produce the amount of hydrocodone in a single Vicodin tablet, said Christina Smolke, the leader of the Stanford bioengineering team.

‘I think this is an important milestone in terms of the complexity of a biosynthetic pathway we can put into an organism like yeast and actually get it to work, ‘ says Smolke. To transform the Stanford strains into a substance from which users could feel high, more than just a home-brew kit would be needed.

Before that moment, artemisinin was grown in sweet wormwood shrubs, which took more time and money than artificially producing it in a laboratory. Now, bioengineered yeast is behind much of the world’s artemisinin. Smolke said she saw pharmaceutical production as a key challenge for her field. Smolke said the goal of producing hydrocodone was to show that yeast can be engineered to create a compound that a plant doesn’t have the cellular machinery to produce.

Some of the 23 genes involved in the genetic engineering effort come from yeast, while others are from plants, bacteria and even rats.

The breakthrough, announced in the journal Science, will bring a faster and potentially cheaper way to produce different types of plant-based medicines. Until the discovery, the painkillers were only derived from opium poppies. In the opium poppy, (S)-reticuline is naturally reconfigured into a variant called (R)-reticuline, a molecule that starts the plant down a path toward the production molecules that can relieve pain.

In a separate study, Smolke looked at concerns that the new GM yeast cells could be used by illegal drug manufacturers and dealers to make homebrew opioids. Smolke hopes that the new procedure could reduce the price of medicines enough to make them more accessible across the globe.

Hydrocodone, which shuts down ache receptors within the mind, and associated chemical compounds like morphine and oxycodone are half of a gaggle of painkilling…

“We need options to help ensure that the bio-based production of medicinal compounds is developed in the most responsible way”, they added.

Prescription opioids are addictive and already cause thousands of overdose deaths in the United States each year. The World Health Organization estimates that 5.5 billion people have little or no access to pain medications.

“It’s definitely the case that no one could take these strains now and use them for commercial production, or abuse them for nefarious purposes”, Smolke said. Also, the process might also pave the way to the formulation of more effective medications.

A group of researchers at Stanford University have concluded the impending threat of “home brew” opiates like heroin is farther off than expected.

We recently reported on the science behind it, but what are the consequences of this research?