Biotechnology medicinal agents

General Properties of Biotechnology-Produced Medicinal Agents... 

Enzymes, proteins, antibodies, biologically active peptides and other protein derivatives have long been used in medicinal agents. Modem biotechnology opened horizons to create new processes and products. For example insulin, interferon and other medical proteins are now being produced commercially by genetic engineering. 

In this volume of Annual Plant Reviews, we have tried to provide an up-to-date survey of the biochemistry and physiology of plant secondary metabolism. A companion volume - M. Wink (ed.) Functions of Plant Secondary Metabolites and Biotechnology - published simultaneously provides overviews of the modes of action of bioactive SMs and their use in pharmacology as molecular probes, in medicine as therapeutic agents and in agriculture as biorational pesticides. 

The real message is that for a very large number of disease entities - not only in man, but also in veterinary medicine and perhaps, as importantly, in crop protection - the potential for large-scale production of these agents by biotechnological means is hmited only by imagination. The basic compounds are there ... 

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