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were detailed. In this section, the contents
are accurate, up-to-date, and by avoiding
much of the specialist terminology, written
in a reader-friendly mode.
In conclusion, anyone who requires a
general awareness of the engineering and
manufacturing for biotechnology in
bioindustry will have reason to consult
this book.
Takeshi Omasa
Dept of Biotechnology, Graduate School ofEngineering, Osaka University, 2-1Yamadaoka, Suita Osaka, 565-0871, Japan.e-mail: [email protected]
Protein drugs come
of age
Recombinant Protein Drugs (Milestones in
Drug Therapy Series)
Edited by Peter Buckel. Birkhäuser Verlag,2001. 210 DM (x + 207 pages) ISBN 3 7643 5904 8
The biotechnology revolution of the past
30 years has had a profound impact on the
direction of pharmaceutical research and
development. Advances in molecular
biology and immunology permitted the
description of diseases at the molecular
level and provided new paradigms for
rational drug development. In addition,
these developments provided us with the
tools for manipulation of biological
macromolecules, such as proteins and
nucleic acids, and their large-scale
production as a new generation of drugs.
However, the translation of the knowledge
from ‘bench to bedside’would have been
difficult without the close partnership of
academic laboratories with pharmaceutical
industries and the emergence of new
‘University spin off ’ companies. Success of
these endeavors is most evident in the
significant number of currently approved
recombinant protein drugs (>30) and in
the growing list of therapeutic proteins
awaiting regulatory approval (>300).
Recombinant Protein Drugs celebrates
these advances by offering a historical
perspective on selected advances in
protein drug discovery and development.
The chapters are organized into four
sections: (1) pioneers and business;
(2) first generation protein drugs;
(3) proteins with new functions: protein
engineering; and (4) further improvement
of protein drugs. The first two chapters
narrate the ‘pioneer stories’ of the
development of recombinant interferons
and hepatitis B vaccine. The excitement of
the new beginnings is captured including
the marriage of academia with industry,
and the scientific challenges of the early
days are also highlighted. The first-
generation protein drugs are illustrated
by three reviews on clotting factors,
colony stimulating factors and tissue
plasminogen activator. These reviews are
comprehensive and cover basic sciences
and clinical applications. The third section
provides a glimpse of the current research
on second-generation protein drugs with a
review on immunokines (fusion proteins of
cytokines with single-chain antibodies
capable of binding tumor-associated
antigens). The last section presents the
challenges in protein drug delivery with
discussions on two diverse approaches:
protein formulation and gene delivery.
Formulation of proteins in biodegradable
polymers is a viable approach to enhance
its stability and favor desirable
pharmacokinetics. However, gene therapy
approaches aimed at achieving expression
of the therapeutic protein by the target
cells present major hurdles that need to be
overcome before they can be used in
clinical applications.
The book is well organized and well
written. Its greatest strength as well as its
unique feature is the historical
perspectives presented by the pioneering
scientists. It also provides an excellent
sampling of currently approved
therapeutic proteins and future
challenges in protein drug development.
Obviously this book is not meant to serve
as a compendium on therapeutic proteins.
In view of this, the topics of choice for the
first two sections are justified. However, a
broader coverage of current approaches in
development of second-generation protein
drugs and their delivery would have been
more appropriate for the third and fourth
sections. Despite this limitation,
Recombinant Protein Drugs makes
excellent reading for health professionals
and biomedical researchers, especially for
those interested in pharmaceutical
biotechnology research.
John Samuel
Faculty of Pharmacy and PharmaceuticalSciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton,AB, Canada, T6G 2N8.e-mail: [email protected]
Proteins – an unfolding
story
From Protein Folding to New Enzymes
Edited by Alan Berry and Sheena E. Radford.Portland Press, London, UK, 2001. £65.00(156 pages) ISBN 1 85578 143 3
Protein folding and protein engineering
are two vibrant areas of molecular biology
and biophysics. The discovery of molecular
chaperones that facilitate folding, the Nobel
prize-winning prion hypothesis and the
linking of protein misfolding with various
diseases are just some of the recent exciting
developments in these fields. Genome
sequencing efforts have further stoked the
furnaces that drive such research. This
book touches on these and other areas.
In April 2000, the Biochemical Society
held its 68th symposium at the University
of Leeds (Leeds, UK), an excellent
conference by all accounts. The book takes
its title from the symposium and its content
from articles contributed by some of the
speakers at the meeting. A review from
Chris Dobson opens the book and a chapter
on degradation of explosives by Neil Bruce
concludes the book, as the editors put it,
‘with a bang’. In between are chapters on
membrane proteins, prions, chaperones,
molecular dynamics simulation, directed
evolution, folding of helices and coiled
coils. This wide-ranging book embraces
several topics of intense current interest,
with obvious relevance to the post-
genomic era, important diseases and
fundamental aspects of protein structure.
Reflecting its origin, the book is a
smorgasbord of contemporary molecular
biology and biophysics, although some
contributions have been more carefully
prepared than others have. There are a few
short chapters, a couple comprising a mere
six pages of content between an abstract
and some references. These rather thin
sandwiches serve mainly as pointers to key
references in the literature. Contributions to
the book are pitched, primarily, to specialists,
but the book is relatively readable and
could certainly be recommended as a
broad read to pique the interest of
graduate students embarking on research
in protein folding or protein engineering.
However, it is not sufficiently substantial
to challenge classics such as Creighton’s
Protein Folding [1], which covered similar
ground a decade ago but in greater depth.
TRENDS in Biotechnology Vol.20 No.3 March 2002
http://tibtech.trends.com
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