Regio Zuid-Holland | Processing of Catharanthus cell cultures for bio-active compounds; Strictosidine and loganic acid as new leads

ExPlant Technologies has developed cell cultures from the medicinal plant Catharanthus roseus, that we use as a platform for studying the biosynthesis of high-value terpenoid indole alkaloids. The main product accumulated by these cultures is strictosidine. .Before, strictosidine did not represent any specific value, except for being the first alkaloid precursor in the pathway of our studies. Recently we recognized that strictosidine can be converted to strictosamide, another alkaloid precursor with reported antimalarial properties in human studies. .Therefore, it is our aim to develop a production process for strictosidine including chemical conversion to strictosamide, which is a new recognized lead for antimalarial drug development. .Even though there is a high demand for antimalarial drugs, the accepted cost price is not very high and in the range of 5-10 €/treated person. Malaria is a disease involving at least a million people a year, and taking approximately 650,000 lives on yearly basis; as such, the market volume is huge and could bring enough financial input to allow a relatively expensive process. .Nevertheless, the accepted prices for antimalarial drugs pose an enormous challenge for the costs associated to down-stream processing, that will be added to the production costs of the cell biomass. For this reason we aim to purify additional active substances from the cell culture biomass to realise secondary revenues. .One of the extra leads is an alkaloid precursor produced by the cell cultures, called loganic acid, that is a precursor for synthesis of pharmaceutical products. In addition, we will screen the generated extracts and fractions for new bio-activities as reported in literature for Catharanthus plants to identify compounds associated to these activities in our cell cultures and to generate leads for new high-value products..