7. Conclusion and perspectives
Biotechnological tools like in vitro propagation and cell culture
are attractive and cost-effective interventions for the synthesis and
production of effective anticancer compounds at an industrial scale. A
plethora of literature has been published on optimization of biomass
growth using these techniques to increase the production of
podophyllotoxin (from Linum, Podophyllum), taxanes (fromTaxus), camptothecin (from C. acuminate) and terpene
indole alkaloids (from C. roseus) . Studies have revealed the
importance of different elicitors (both abiotic and biotic) for the
activation of genes involved in the metabolic pathways to enhance the
biotechnological production of anticancer compounds. Moreover,
understanding and elucidation of highly complex biosynthetic pathways
involving transcription factors and master regulators are inevitable for
the successful application of these techniques. Recent developments in
“Omics” technologies, especially proteomics and metabolomics, will help
to improve the elicitation of metabolic pathways of secondary plant
compounds. Such mechanistic insights provided by transcriptomic profiles
and analysis of differential expression networks after elicitation will
facilitate the identification of limiting steps while revealing
prospective targets for metabolic engineering.
Moreover, these technologies also offer exciting opportunities to
manipulate these metabolic pathways by controlling the expression of
genes encoding transcription factors or master regulators. Advances in
metabolomics will also facilitate to harvest elicitor-driven effects to
develop highly productive cell cultures. Recent developments in
synthetic biology techniques would also pave the way for the production
of high added value secondary metabolites in heterologous systems. These
technological breakthroughs will lead to cost-effective and sustainable
commercial production of plant bioactive compounds with potent
anticancer activity