Model projections show that production of high-value products from microalgae could be profitable nowadays and commodities will become profitable within 10 years.

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The feasibility of microalgae production for biodiesel was discussed. Although algae are not yet produced at large scale for bulk applications, there are opportunities to develop this process in a sustainable way. It remains unlikely, however, that the process will be developed for biodiesel as the only end product from microalgae. In order to develop a more sustainable and economically feasible process, all biomass components (e.g. proteins, lipids, carbohydrates) should be used and therefore biorefining of microalgae is very important for the selective separation and use of the functional biomass components. If biorefining of microalgae is applied, lipids should be fractionated into lipids for biodiesel, lipids as a feedstock for the chemical industry and ω‐3 fatty acids, proteins and carbohydrates for food, feed and bulk chemicals, and the oxygen produced should be recovered also. If, in addition, production of algae is done on residual nutrient feedstocks and CO2, and production of microalgae is done on a large scale against low production costs, production of bulk chemicals and fuels from microalgae will become economically feasible.In order to obtain that, a number of bottlenecks need to be removed and a multidisciplinary approach in which systems biology, metabolic modeling, strain development, photobioreactor design and operation, scale‐up, biorefining, integrated production chain, and the whole system design (including logistics) should be addressed. Copyright © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Antibodies are the most successful affinity tools used today, in both fundamental and applied research (diagnostics, purification and therapeutics). Nonetheless, antibodies do have their limitations, including high production costs and low stability. Alternative affinity tools based on nucleic acids (aptamers), polypeptides (engineered binding proteins) and inorganic matrices (molecular imprinted polymers) have received considerable attention. A major advantage of these alternatives concerns the efficient (microbial) production and in vitro selection procedures. The latter approach allows for the high-throughput optimization of aptamers and engineered binding proteins, e.g. aiming at enhanced chemical and physical stability. This has resulted in a rapid development of the fields of nucleic acid- and protein-based affinity tools and, although they are certainly not as widely used as antibodies, the number of their applications has steadily increased in recent years. In the present review, we compare the properties of the more conventional antibodies with these innovative affinity tools. Recent advances of affinity tool developments are described, both in a medical setting (e.g. diagnostics, therapeutics and drug delivery) and in several niche areas for which antibodies appear to be less attractive. Furthermore, an outlook is provided on anticipated future developments.

Structural information on intracellular fusions of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) of the jellyfish Aequorea victoria with endogenous proteins is required as they are increasingly used in cell biology and biochemistry. We have investigated the dynamic properties of GFP alone and fused to a single chain antibody raised against lipopolysaccharide of the outer cell wall of Gram-negative bacteria (abbreviated as scFv-GFP). The scFv moiety was functional as was proven in binding assays, which involved the use of both fluorescence correlation spectroscopy observing the binding of scFv-GFP to Gram-negative bacteria and a surface plasmon resonance cell containing adsorbed lipopolysaccharide antigen. The rotational motion of scFv-GFP has been investigated with time-resolved fluorescence anisotropy. However, the rotational correlation time of scFv-GFP is too short to account for globular rotation of the whole protein. This result can only be explained by assuming a fast hinge motion between the two fused proteins. A modeled structure of scFv-GFP supports this observation.The green fluorescent protein (GFP) 1 from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria has received widespread utilization as a natural fluorescent marker for gene expression, localization of gene products (1-5), and identification of protein interaction and function. GFP is a protein consisting of 238 amino acids with a molecular mass of 27 kDa and has the shape of a cylinder with a length of 4.2 nm and diameter of 2.4 nm. The chemical structure of the hexapeptide chromophore has been elucidated (6). The intrinsic fluorophore is a p-hydroxybenzylidene-imidazolidine derivative formed by a covalent modification of the sequence Ser 65 (or Thr 65 in enhanced GFP), Tyr 66 , and Gly 67 in the hexapeptide. A comprehensive review on GFP has been published (7). The crystal structure of GFP and enhanced GFP has been solved and showed the hexapeptide to be part of a central helix inside a 11-stranded ␤-barrel (8 -11).Genetic fusions of a variety of proteins with GFP have been used in numerous studies on gene or protein function. In a sense it is miraculous that in most fusion proteins GFP is functional. In many other fusion proteins, the protein used as a reporter does often not fold well, resulting in aggregates or inclusion bodies of the entire fusion protein. Sometimes the causes of aggregation can be attributed to certain (clusters of) amino acids such as hydrophobic clusters of amino acids that become solvent exposed (12). To obtain a better picture why these phenomena do not occur in GFP fusion proteins, we have investigated the behavior of the GFP moiety in fusion proteins and emphasized the motional properties. Thereto, we fused enhanced GFP with a single chain Fv fragment raised against the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) of a Gram-negative bacterium. Because the single chain antibody was linked to the N-terminal residue of GFP, the fusion protein is abbreviated as scFv-GFP. Here we report information relevant for the dynamics of GFP fusion proteins used to monitor pro...

A linker-drug platform was built on the basis of a cleavable linker-duocarmycin payload for the development of new-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADC). A leading ADC originating from that platform is SYD983, a HER2-targeting ADC based on trastuzumab. HER2-binding, antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity and HER2-mediated internalization are similar for SYD983 as compared with trastuzumab. HER2-expressing cells in vitro are very potently killed by SYD983, but SYD983 is inactive in cells that do not express HER2. SYD983 dose dependently reduces tumor growth in a BT-474 mouse xenograft in vivo. The ADC is stable in human and cynomolgus monkey plasma in vitro but shows relatively poor stability in mouse plasma due to mouse-specific carboxylesterase. SYD983 could be dosed up to 30 mg/kg in cynomolgus monkeys with high exposure, excellent stability in blood, and without severe toxic effects. The monkey safety study showed no SYD983-induced thrombocytopenia and no induction of peripheral sensory neuropathy, both commonly observed in trials and studies with ADCs based on tubulin inhibitors. Finally, to improve homogeneity, SYD983 was further purified by hydrophobic interaction chromatography resulting in an ADC (designated SYD985) predominantly containing DAR2 and DAR4 species. SYD985 showed high antitumor activity in two patient-derived xenograft models of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancers. In conclusion, the data obtained indicate great potential for this new HER2-targeting ADC to become an effective drug for patients with HER2-positive cancers with a favorable safety profile. More generally, this new-generation duocarmycin-based linker-drug technology could be used with other mAbs to serve more indications in oncology. Mol Cancer Ther; 13(11); 2618-29. Ó2014 AACR.

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