Chinese yeast factory boosts cancer drug production speed 1,000 times

AI Summary

Researchers at Zhejiang University have engineered yeast to drastically increase production speed of the anticancer drug vinblastine by 1000 times. This breakthrough could significantly reduce costs and improve the drug’s supply reliability, impacting health and pharmaceutical markets.

A research team at Zhejiang University has cracked a molecular puzzle, turning ordinary yeast into a powerful factory for an expensive cancer drug and boosting its production by a thousand times. The anticancer drug vinblastine has long been sourced exclusively from the Madagascar periwinkle plant. But it takes 2 tonnes of dried leaves to yield just 1 gram of vinblastine, making it more expensive than gold by weight. This extreme scarcity has kept the drug costly and its supply unreliable for...