Is There a New Way to Make a Virus-Fighting Protein?

Medicines that are made with biological molecules like griffithsin are called biologics. They are normally manufactured in huge batches using living cells such as E.coli bacteria. (The cells are given DNA-encoded instructions for how to make the medicine.) However, that method has drawbacks, including the need to keep the cells alive.
Rao and his colleagues developed a method to manufacture griffithsin that does not require living cells. Instead, the researchers take the protein-manufacturing “guts” out of the cells. Into this soup of cellular components, they then add the DNA instructions for making griffithsin, along with the needed molecular building blocks.
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“The cellular machinery still works, even without a living cell to support it,” says Rao. “The method is simple and effective.”
Using cell-free manufacturing methods, the researchers produced significant quantities of griffithsin in less than 24 hours. They purified the protein to strict standards and demonstrated in lab experiments that it could disable both HIV and SARS-CoV-2 viruses as effectively as the same griffithsin protein made by living cells.
The method could be easily adapted to work with a portable, suitcase-sized biologics manufacturing device, dubbed Bio-MOD, that Rao and a team of mostly UMBC researchers recently developed. They described the device in a 2018 paper in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.
The new griffithsin protein manufacturing process together with the portable Bio-MOD device could be a powerful weapon to quickly combat new viruses before they spread.
Source: Eurekalert
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