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