by Zaara Abbas / May 29, 2024
Scientists at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have remarkably figured out a way to produce a key vaccine ingredient called QS-21 using yeast instead of tree bark. This innovation promises to make vaccines more affordable and environmentally sustainable.
QS-21 is a powerful "adjuvant" that supercharges the effectiveness of many vaccines, including those for shingles, malaria, and COVID-19. Adjuvants are compounds added to vaccines that help rev up the immune system's response, allowing smaller doses of the main vaccine ingredient to be used.
Up until now, QS-21 has been extracted from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree through an expensive and environmentally-damaging process involving harsh chemicals. This tree-derived QS-21 costs hundreds of millions of dollars per kilogram to produce. Using advanced synthetic biology techniques, the Berkeley scientists transplanted genes from six different organisms into yeast, engineering these microscopic factories to produce QS-21 through fermentation. Their yeast can currently make small but significant amounts of QS-21 worth about $200 per liter of fermentation broth.
While more optimization is needed to ramp up production, this method is exponentially cheaper and more sustainable than conventional QS-21 sourcing. Yeast can multiply indefinitely using just sugar as a feedstock, avoiding energy-intensive agriculture and toxic extraction.
This breakthrough boosts adjuvant supplies and reduces vaccine manufacturing costs which is a gamechanger for promoting global vaccination access. More affordable and eco-friendly QS-21 production could enhance disease prevention efforts worldwide, which saves countless lives from infancy to old age.
The Berkeley researchers aim to further engineer the yeast to create optimized QS-21 variants with even greater immune-stimulating power.
Citations:
University of California - Berkeley. (2024, May 13). Synthetic Biology Breakthrough paves the way for cheaper vaccines. SciTechDaily. https://scitechdaily.com/synthetic-biology-breakthrough-paves-the-way-for-cheaper-vaccines/
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