Pichia Technology
Here, we present articles on important aspects of the Pichia pastoris technology.
About the Author: James M. Cregg, Ph.D., a molecular and cellular biologist with particular expertise and interest in yeasts, played a major role in developing the Pichia system. As a result of Cregg’s work, P. pastoris has become a major gene expression system for the production of a variety of foreign proteins. Examples of pharmaceutical proteins made in Pichia include: a vaccine against hepatitis B; human serum albumen, a component for an artificial blood plasma; and the anti-angiogenic proteins, angiostatin and endostatin, which have received attention in the press as potential anticancer drugs.
Cregg has continued research aimed at understanding and improving the Pichia system. One goal of his studies is to provide the P. pastoris user community with improved system components and methods.
About the Author: Work by Roland Contreras, Ph.D., at Ghent University and VIB in Belgium, discovered a way to manipulate the Pichia glycosylation system to produce uniform, small ASN-linked glycans on any glycoprotein of interest. These glycans have the same structure as processing intermediates of the mammalian N-glycosylation pathway.
The GlycoSwitch service is available to Pichia licensees.
