Trosset, Jean-YvesCarbonell, Pablo2016-02-182016-02-182015Trosset JY, Carbonell P. Synthetic biology for pharmaceutical drug discovery. Drug Des Devel Ther. 2015 Dec 3;9:6285-302. doi: 10.2147/DDDT.S58049.1177-8881http://hdl.handle.net/10230/25869Synthetic biology (SB) is an emerging discipline, which is slowly reorienting the field of drug discovery. For thousands of years, living organisms such as plants were the major source of human medicines. The difficulty in resynthesizing natural products, however, often turned pharmaceutical industries away from this rich source for human medicine. More recently, progress on transformation through genetic manipulation of biosynthetic units in microorganisms has opened the possibility of in-depth exploration of the large chemical space of natural products derivatives. Success of SB in drug synthesis culminated with the bioproduction of artemisinin by microorganisms, a tour de force in protein and metabolic engineering. Today, synthetic cells are not only used as biofactories but also used as cell-based screening platforms for both target-based and phenotypic-based approaches. Engineered genetic circuits in synthetic cells are also used to decipher disease mechanisms or drug mechanism of actions and to study cell-cell communication within bacteria consortia. This review presents latest developments of SB in the field of drug discovery, including some challenging issues such as drug resistance and drug toxicity.application/pdfeng© 2015 Trosset and Carbonell. This work is published by Dove Medical Press Limited, and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License. The full terms of the License are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. Permissions beyond the scope of the License are administered by Dove Medical Press Limited. Information onhow to request permission may be found at: http://www.dovepress.com/permissions.phpMedicaments -- DissenyFarmacologiaProductes naturals -- Investigacióinfo:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.2147/DDDT.S58049info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess