BIOTEC 3. Therapeutics, diagnostics, cell cultures and product isolation. Stuttgart, New York: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1990 106 pp., 30 fig., 9 tab., DM 68,–, ISBN 3-437-30603-0

✍ Scribed by K. Sattler

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 54 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0138-4988
• DOI: 10.1002/abio.370120112

✦ Synopsis

BIOTEC is a series of up-to-date reviews written by internationally leading experts. BIOTEC 3 is dedicated to new pharmaceutical products (77 pp.) and techniques for product isolation and animal cell cultivation (27 pp.). Under the heading therapeutics and diagnostics we will find such outstanding products as the tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA), the hepatitis B vaccine, new vaccines against viruses like HIV, Pertussis and parasites, blood proteins like factor VIII, proteases and their inhibitors. There is a report about the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), invented and developed in the labs of Cetus Corporation. PCR permits the detecting of rare events in an organism such as point mutation or a single virus, and in a brief, instructive lesson (5pp) we learn that it has a broad impact o n diagnostics, forensics, genetics, taxonomy and evolutionary biology. The reports impressively show us that with the aid of modem biotechnology a "new-age'' medicine is arising. Mostly the new therapeutics are products of mammalian cell cultures. Therefore, the second part of the review, giving an idea of the principles dominating in industrial cell-culture production, is a desirable completion. In the last chapter new fluidized-bed bioreactors for animalcell cultures, based upon the immobilization of cells in a matrix are described. This system provides high cell densities for cost-effective volumetric output, long-term culture stability, product consistency, purity and biological activity. Biochemists, virologists, molecular geneticists, microbiologists. and even laymen who are interested in a certain piece of information about the recent state in the medical application of modern cell-culture biotechnology may save a lot of time reading this book.