BioChem Therapeutic

In 1997 Alan Cameron, formerly with Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, New York, and SynPhar Laboratories, Inc., of Edmonton, Alberta, joined BioChem Therapeutic, Inc., Laval, Quebec. He has been involved at BioChem in new compound identification and optimization of existing lead compounds directed toward various therapeutic agents including antithrombotics, opioid analgesics, and anticancer and antiviral compounds. He obtained his Ph.D. under the supervision of Mike Baird and Vedene Smith at Queen s University and was a postdoctoral fellow with Mike Zerner at Florida. 

Miguel Quimpere joined BioChem Therapeutic in 1990 as a synthetic organic chemist and has since moved on to data management and molecular modeling, with a particular view to diverse library design and combinatorial chemistry. 

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Cetus (Chiron) United States strains, biochemicals, therapeutics... 

BioChem Therapeutic Inc., 275 Annand-Frappier Boulevard, Laval, Quebec H7V 4A7, (Tanada... 

Work reported in this article was supported in part by a Medical Research Council of Canada University-Industry grant awarded to M.D.H. in conjunction with BioChem Therapeutic Inc. The authors are grateful to the staff of the Pharmaceutical sector of the Biotechnology Research Institute of Montreal (NRC) without whom part of the work described in this article would not have been possible. We are also indebted to Drs. Rene Martel and Arshad Siddiqui as well as to Annie St-Pierre, Celine Locas, Micheline Tarazi and Nicole Landry for expert assistance. We are also grateful to Mrs. Sylvie Ouellet for secretarial help. 

Biochem Therapeutic, Inc. Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Group C/D/N Isotopes, Inc. 

BioChem Therapeutic Inc., 275 Boulevard Armand-Frappier, Laval, PQ, Canada H7V4A7... 

There are thousands of breweries worldwide. However, the number of companies using fermentation to produce therapeutic substances and/or fine chemicals number well over 150, and those that grow microorganisms for food and feed number nearly 100. Lists of representative fermentation products produced commercially and the corresponding companies are available (1). Numerous other companies practice fermentation in some small capacity because it is often the only route to synthesize biochemical intermediates, enzymes, and many fine chemicals used in minor quantities. The large volume of L-phenylalanine is mainly used in the manufacture of the artificial dipeptide sweetener known as aspartame [22389-47-0]. Prior to the early 1980s there was httle demand for L-phenyl alanine, most of which was obtained by extraction from human hair and other nonmicrobiological sources. 

Antineoplastic Drugs. Cyclophosphamide (193) produces antineoplastic effects (see Chemotherapeutics, anticancer) via biochemical conversion to a highly reactive phosphoramide mustard (194) it is chiral owing to the tetrahedral phosphoms atom. The therapeutic index of the (3)-(-)-cyclophosphamide [50-18-0] (193) is twice that of the (+)-enantiomer due to increased antitumor activity the enantiomers are equally toxic (139). The effectiveness of the DNA intercalator dmgs adriamycin [57-22-7] (195) and daunomycin [20830-81-3] (196) is affected by changes in stereochemistry within the aglycon portions of these compounds. Inversion of the carbohydrate C-1 stereocenter provides compounds without activity. The carbohydrate C-4 epimer of adriamycin, epimbicin [56420-45-2] is as potent as its parent molecule, but is significandy less toxic (139). 

Producing the kilograms of tPA necessary to satisfy the world s therapeutic needs requires the special skills possessed by modern biochemical engineers. Sophisticated engineering of the fermentation vessels, culturing conditions, and media compositions is required to culture thousands of liters of mammalian cells. In addition, new extremes of purity must be achieved in order to assure the safety of proteins derived from mammalian cells. The cost of the starting materials and the capacity constraints of the present-day equipment require that yields from each fermentation batch be as high as possible. 

Whole cells are grown for a variety of reasons. The cells may perform a desired transformation of the substrate, e.g., wastewater treatment the cells themselves may be the desired produce, e.g., yeast production or the cells may produce a desired product, e.g., penicillin. In the later case, the desired product may be excreted, as for the penicillin example, and recovered in relatively simple fashion. If the desired product is retained within the cell walls, it is necessary to lyse (rupture) the cells and recover the product from a complex mixture of cellular proteins. This approach is often needed for therapeutic proteins that are created by recombinant DNA technology. The resulting separation problem is one of the more challenging aspects of biochemical engineering. However, culture of the cells can be quite difficult experimentally and is even more demanding theoretically. 

IFN-co (Intarcia Therapeutics, Emeryville, California) has been reported to be well tolerated and safe, in patients infected with various HCV genotypes, at doses of 15-120pg three times weekly for 12 weeks, with dose-dependent virological and biochemical responses (Plauth et al. 2002). At a dose of 25 pg daily, IFN-co induced a 2-log HCV RNA dechne at week 12 in two-thirds of 74 patients infected with HCV genotype 1 (Gorbakov et al. 2005). In a recent trial, SVR was achieved in 6% and 36% of patients receiving the same dose of IFN-O) without and with ribavirin, respectively (Novozhenov et al. 2007). A new trial of IFN-m, delivered continuously by an implantable device, will start soon. 

The red microalga genus Porphyridium is a source of biochemicals possessing nutritional and therapeutic values. The biochemicals include polysaccharides that have anti-inflammatory and antiviral properties, long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, carotenoids such as zeaxanthin, and fluorescent phycobiliproteins. 

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