Cancer cells: novel expression systems in pharmaceutical biotechnology

Abstract

Every day, numerous medications are used worldwide to treat different kinds of diseases. A huge part of drug manufacturing - is done in pharmaceutical biotechnology companies. Scientists have developed a variety of methods to synthesize these substances. They can insert the gene or the cDNA of a desired protein into special expression systems and extract the resulted products using different methods. The paraneoplastic syndromes are signs and symptoms originated from cancer cell derived products and not because of direct invasion of tumor cells or metastasis. Cancer cells can secret a wide variety of products such as growth hormones, antibodies and so on. In an innovative route, these products may be processed further and eventually be used as useful biologic substances. In this manuscript, we described a process by which scientists can use cancer cells in order to produce various types of biological substances which can be used as medications, diagnostic substances and research materials. Our hypothesis has been inspired from autonomous production of biologic substances from those cancer cells that are responsible for manifestations of paraneoplastic syndromes.