Biotecnología blanca e industria farmacéutica

Zusammenfassung

White Biotechnology is related to the utilization of biological systems for the manufacture, transformation or degradation of molecules using enzymatic and fermentative processes. This definition fits the biocatalytic processes and the biotransformations in the huge set of disciplines and sciences that have been defined as Biotechnology. The stabilization of enzymes and cells for increasing their resistance towards the organic solvents by immobilization and modification techniques, as well as using genetic engineering, has supposed a significant impulse. On the other hand, the knowledge of the reaction media and the control of the variables affecting the process has supposed a real technological transformation. Industrial Biotechnology has become an important tool for obtaining drugs (and other bioproducts) which are difficult or impossible to obtain by chemical traditional methods. At the present, more than 325 million people in the world use drugs with a biotechnological origin, so it can be deduced that the application of the Biotechnology (and specially Biocatalysis) has crossed the academic border finding a wide range of utilities in the pharmaceutical Industry. The biotechnological processes, due to their high efficiency and specificity, generate reduced levels of residues when compared to chemical conventional processes which on the other hand, are comparatively more dangerous.