(307h) Engineering Pichia pastoris for the low-cost production of therapeutic proteins and vaccines

Pichia pastoris is a methylotrophic yeast that has been used in the production of recombinant proteins for more than 30 years. As a eukaryotic microbial host, P. pastoris is the best of both worlds. It has ability to perform complex post-translational modifications, but grows rapidly to high cell densities using low-cost substrates. In this talk, I will discuss the efforts of our group to improve the production therapeutic proteins and recombinant vaccines in P. pastoris using a combination of synthetic biology tools, product engineering, and cell line modifications. Using these strategies, P. pastoris can become an alternative to mammalian production systems for the manufacture of proteins for the developing world and beyond.