ChE Seminar: “Engineering the Production of Medicinal Natural Products from Plant Cell Cultures”

ChE Seminar Series Presents:

Carolyn W.T. Lee-Parsons, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering Department; Chemistry & Chemical Biology Department, Northeastern University, Boston, MA

“Engineering the Production of Medicinal Natural Products from Plant Cell Cultures”

Abstract:

Many plant-derived pharmaceuticals are currently supplied by extracting the plant material.  Due to the slow growth rates or low product concentrations in plants, finding an alternative route for supplying these critical drugs is necessary.  The overall vision of this research is to enhance the production of critical plant-derived pharmaceutical compounds through genetically engineered plant cell cultures, specifically using the production of terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs) from cultures of Catharanthus roseus as a model system.  The C. roseus plant produces several highly valued pharmaceuticals, including the anti-cancer drugs vincristine and vinblastine.  The high cost and need for these pharmaceuticals motivate our research to better understand their biosynthesis and ultimately overproduce these compounds using C. roseus cultures.  In this talk, I will present our research in exploring how TIA biosynthesis is regulated and how this knowledge leads to developing synthetic biology strategies for manipulating TIA production.

Biography:

Carolyn W.T. Lee-Parsons is an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Northeastern University.  She earned her B.S. from the University of Kansas and her Ph.D. from Cornell University, both in Chemical Engineering.  As an undergraduate, she modeled reaction networks with Prof. Bala Subramaniam and investigated oil and gas recovery strategies at ARCO Oil and Gas. Growing up in the midst of wheat fields in Kansas, she was always intrigued by plants and specifically medicines from plants.  As a doctoral student, she investigated bioprocess strategies for increasing the production of medicines from plant cell cultures with Prof. Michael L. Shuler.

Her current research area is in plant metabolic engineering and plant synthetic biology.  Her team of graduate and undergraduate students focus on understanding how plants regulate the production of specialized metabolites and on developing and applying tools for engineering the production of pharmaceutical compounds and biofuels from plant tissue cultures and microalgae cultures.  Carolyn seeks to engage majors across disciplines in understanding the fundamentals underlying life in living organisms and translating this understanding to developing solutions to society’s grand challenges.  She contributed to the revision of the widely used textbook for bioprocess engineering (Bioprocess Engineering:  Basic Concepts by M.L. Shuler, F. Kargi, and M. DeLisa).  For her teaching and research mentoring, she was awarded the Martin Essigmann Outstanding Teaching Award and the University Excellence in Teaching Award at Northeastern University.

Please email Alyssa Ramsey at a.ramsey@northeastern.edu for the link to the seminar.