Biotechnological production of 20-alpha-dihydrodydrogesterone at pilot scale.

The human sex hormone progesterone plays an essential and complex role in a number of physiological processes. Progesterone deficiency is associated with menstrual disorders and infertility as well as premature birth and abortion. For progesterone replacement therapy, the synthetic progestogen dydrogesterone is commonly used. In the body, this drug is metabolized to 20α-dihydrodydrogesterone (20α-DHD), which also shows extensive pharmacological effects and hence could act as a therapeutic agent itself. In this study, we describe an efficient biotechnological production procedure for 20α-DHD that employs the stereo- and regioselective reduction of dydrogesterone in a whole-cell biotransformation process based on recombinant fission yeast cells expressing the human enzyme AKR1C1 (20α-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase, 20α-HSD). In a fed-batch fermentation at pilot scale (70 L) with a genetically improved production strain and under optimized reaction conditions, an average 20α-DHD production rate of 190 µM day(-1) was determined for a total biotransformation time of 136 h. Combined with an effective and reliable downstream processing, a continuous production rate of 12.3 ± 1.4 g 20α-DHD per week and fermenter was achieved. We thus established an AKR-dependent whole-cell biotransformation process that can also be used for the production of other AKR1C1 substrates (as exemplarily shown by the production of 20α-dihydroprogesterone in gram scale) and is in principle suited for the production of further human AKR metabolites at industrial scale.

Expression and secretion of a CB4-1 scFv-GFP fusion protein by fission yeast.

There is a rapidly growing demand for fluorescent single-chain Fv (scFv) antibody fragments for many applications. Yeasts have developed into attractive hosts for recombinant production of these functionalized proteins because they provide several advantages over prokaryotes and higher eukaryotes as expression systems, e.g., being capable of high-level secretion of heterologous proteins. In this study, we report Schizosaccharomyces pombe as a new host organism for secretory production of scFv-green fluorescent protein (GFP) fusions and compare it with previously described yeast expression systems. We cloned a plasmid for the expression and secretion of the anti-p24 (human immunodeficiency virus 1) CB4-1 scFv fused to GFP. After expression of the scFv-GFP fused to an N-terminal Cpy1 secretion signal sequence, fluorescence microscopy of living yeast cells indicated that the heterologous protein entered the secretory pathway. Western blot analysis of cell-free culture supernatants confirmed that the scFv-GFP was efficiently secreted with yields up to 5 mg/L. In addition, fluorescence measurements of culture supernatants demonstrated that the GFP moiety of the scFv-GFP protein is fully functional after secretion. Our data suggest that S. pombe has the potential for being used as alternative expression host in recombinant antibody fragment production by ensuring efficient protein processing and secretion.

Human 20α-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (AKR1C1)-dependent biotransformation with recombinant fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

While phase I and phase II drug metabolites are important for drug development and toxicity studies, e.g. in the context of metabolites in safety testing (MIST), they are often not commercially available and their classical chemical synthesis can be cumbersome. Therefore, a biotechnological production of drug metabolites using microorganisms that recombinantly express human enzymes has been established in recent years. However, no whole-cell biotransformations that make use of human aldo-keto reductases (AKRs) have yet been reported. In this study, we have functionally expressed human AKR1C1 (20α-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase) in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe and demonstrate the ability of the resulting yeast strain to efficiently catalyze the reduction of progesterone or dydrogesterone to 20α-dihydroprogesterone (20α-DHP) and 20α-dihydrodydrogesterone (20α-DHD), respectively. The formation of any by-products or the occurrence of a back reaction were not detected. Seven other steroids with a 20-keto group (pregnenolone, 17α-hydroxyprogesterone, 11-deoxycortisol, cortisol, 11-deoxycorticosterone, corticosterone, and aldosterone) were not reduced by this system. At shaking flask scale we obtained conversion rates of 90 (±26) µM/d 20α-DHP and 244 (±93) µM/d 20α-dihydrodydrogesterone (20α-DHD), respectively. In a fed-batch fermentation under optimized reaction conditions an average 20α-DHP production rate of 300 µM/d was determined for a total biotransformation time of 72 h. We thus established an AKR-dependent whole-cell biotransformation process that can be used for production of human AKR metabolites on a large scale.