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Biotechnology and Applied Biochemistry (1999) 30, (117–120) (Printed in Great Britain)

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Review

Towards molecular farming in the future: Pichia pastoris-based production of single-chain antibody fragments

Rainer Fischer*†¹, Jürgen Drossard*, Neil Emans*, Ulrich Commandeur* and Stephan Hellwig*

*Institut für Biologie I (Botanik/Molekulargenetik), RWTH Aachen, Worringerweg 1, D-52074 Aachen, Germany, and †Fraunhofer Department for Molecular Biotechnology, IUCT, Grafschaft, Auf dem Aberg 1, D-57392 Schmallenberg, Germany

¹ To whom correspondence should be addressed, at: Institut für Biologie I (Botanik/Molekulargenetik), RWTH Aachen, Worringerweg 1, D-52074 Aachen, Germany.

This review article focuses on the use of the methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris as a recombinant protein-expression system. P. pastoris is a useful system for the expression of milligram-to-gram quantities of a protein, which can be scaled up to fermentation to meet greater demands. Compared with mammalian cells, Pichia do not require a complex growth medium or culture conditions, they are as easy to manipulate genetically as Escherichia coli and have a eukaryotic protein-synthesis pathway. They seem suited to laboratory-scale production of recombinant proteins for in-house use or, in some cases, molecular farming of recombinant products. This review article focuses on the use of P. pastoris, describes a fermentation production run of a single-chain antibody fragment and includes a discussion of fermentation as a production strategy.

Received 29 April 1999; accepted 21 May 1999

Portland Press Ltd © 1999