Establish an artificial biosynthetic pathway for the anti-tumor drug candidate icariin

The Zhou Zhihua research group of the Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the team of researcher Wang Ying from the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences established for the first time an artificial biosynthesis pathway for the late-stage liver cancer drug candidate icariin.

Icariin is the main active ingredient of the traditional Chinese medicine Epimedium, and it is also the single ingredient of the candidate drug for advanced liver cancer, Akoladine.

At the same time, the researchers introduced 11 exogenous genes and modified 12 yeast endogenous genes to construct a yeast chassis with high yield of 8P-KAE.

Zhou Zhihua said that this research not only identified two new biological elements, but also realized the de novo synthetic synthesis of icariin for the first time, laying a foundation for the large-scale preparation of icariin and its derivatives, and also for solving the synthesis problem.

Related paper information: org/10.