The market for drugs and treatments using biological products is rapidly growing. This is mainly due to the great potential that biological products have in comparison to traditional drugs. Biological products are composed of bigger molecules such as proteins and antibodies, and therefore allow a much more specific treatment. With the complexity of the molecules comes complexity in the upscaling of manufacturing. Start-up companies tend to lack knowledge of this process; consequently, outsourcing is often a requirement for the companies to grow. Outsourcing can be both risky and costly and the companies could benefit from having the skills in-house instead. This report provides information about needs, obstacles and driving forces regarding the future market for biological medicine and also outsourcing’s effect on the market. Desktop research was used to provide necessary information about the market and biological medicines, and also to find companies, research groups and investors that we mapped according to parameters, such as location and what field of medicine they engage in. Through phone and email contact, we gained further understanding about the actors we targeted. Desktop research and interviews were used to identify needs, obstacles and driving forces regarding the development of biological medicine. The result gives insight into where in Sweden the different candidates operate and it tells what pursuits and holdbacks they are facing when developing biological medicines. The major driving force is providing patients efficient treatments but also the opportunity to capitalise in a novel and successful type of industry. The major obstacle is first and foremost the great amount of money needed. Also, companies fail to grasp the many complex and time consuming steps in developing biological medicines. The interviews also showed that outsourcing is practically inevitable, especially for small companies, due to the difficulties of concentrating the competence in-house. In conclusion, the report shows that the benefits of biological medicine creates great driving forces for its development and that Sweden makes up a good climate for this. It also enlightens the importance of test beds to ensure that the future development relies on competence.

Cyanobakterier är intressanta mikroorganismer för produktion av biobränslen från solljus, vatten och atmosfärisk koldioxid och anses därför vara potentiella mikrobiella cellfabriker. Men på grund av långsam tillväxt och låg produktion är genteknologi processen intensiv och tidskrävande för cyanobakterier. En alternativ metod till prototypteknik för metabola vägar är att använda cellfri metabolisk teknik där cellysat av överuttryckta enzymer används. I detta projekt försökte vi utveckla en metod för cellfri metabolisk ingenjörsteknik för cyanobakterien Synechocystis PCC 6803 med hjälp av den övre mevalonatvägen som exempelreaktionsväg. Vi började med att utveckla tre fluorescensbaserade metoder för att detektera proteinöveruttryck med hjälp av de tre enzymerna från mevalonatreaktionsvägen. Dessa metoder använde fusering av YFP-proteinet till målproteinet, en delad GFP-reporterprotein eller translationskoppling. Ett av de överuttryckta enzymerna verkade vara giftigt för Synechocystis-celler så flera inducerbara promotorer användes för att försöka uttrycka enzymet. Den högst uttryckande konstruktionen för varje gen valdes ut och proteiner extraherades och blandades i en cellfri metabolisk ingenjörsreaktion. Även om inget mevalonat kunde detekteras med hjälp av gaskromatografi i detta projekt, berodde detta sannolikt på otillräckligt högt proteinöveruttryck av mevalonatgenerna. / Cyanobacteria are desirable microorganisms for the production of biofuels from sunlight, water and atmospheric carbon dioxide, and are therefore considered potential microbial cell factories. But due to slow growth rate and low production rates, the engineering processes for bioproduction is labour intensive and time consuming. An alternative method to prototype metabolic pathway engineering is to use cell-free metabolic engineering, where cell lysates of enriched enzymes are used. In this project, we attempted to develop a method for cell-free metabolic engineering for the cyanobacterium Synechocystis PCC 6803 using the upper mevalonate pathway as an example pathway. We started by developing three fluorescence-based methods for detecting protein overexpression using the three enzymes from the mevalonate pathway. These methods used YFP fusion to target proteins, a split GFP reporter tag or translation coupling. One of the overexpressed enzymes appeared to be toxic to Synechocystis cells so several inducible promoters were used to try and express the enzyme. The highest expressing construct for each gene was selected and proteins were extracted and mixed in a cell free metabolic engineering reaction. Although no mevalonate could be detected using gas chromatography in this project, this was likely due to insufficiently high protein overexpression of the mevalonate pathway genes.