Simply put, we aim to make paclitaxel more environmentally friendly and accessible. Producing paclitaxel cheaply in soybeans will make cancer treatment cheaper for the average patient. Furthermore, we hope that our platform can serve as a foundation for future biopharming of complex molecules.

We have begun testing a plasmid containing two important paclitaxel genes, and have several more genes in the making. Once our beans are able to make the critical intermediate Baccatin III, from which paclitaxel can be easily synthesized, we will begin producing fully stable transgenic plants.

**Figure 1:** Proposed Implementation Progress. Heavily adapted from Mutanda et al. 2021¹

Next, we would plant our soybeans the same way everyone else does: in a field! Soybeans are already one of the most popular GMO crops in the US², are cheap, and are easily grown. The engineered soybeans would be contracted out to farmers who know how to grow them best. After a brief stint in the field, some of the plants would be moved back to the lab for paclitaxel intermediate extraction and some of the beans would stay for the next crop. The completed paclitaxel product would then be moved to pharmaceutical companies who get the product to our proposed end users, medical patients. Paclitaxel can be used as a treatment for several different types of cancer³, and is currently being tested for other diseases related to microtubule stabilization such as skin disorders, fibrosis, coronary artery disease, and degenerative brain disease⁴.

**Figure 2:** Bean to Business: Proposed Implementation

To bring our beans to business, we have considered several safeguards and challenges. We have successfully tested and implemented an additive-free, visual marker named RUBY⁵ (Part: BBa_K4201012) to scan for transformed cells. RUBY does not require any hazardous chemicals such as the pesticides that glyphosate resistance would need, nor require sacrificial plant cultures such as the ones a GUS reporter gene would require. This reduces lab costs, lab hazards, and lab chemical waste.

To minimize the possibility of our soybeans affecting or being affected by neighboring crops, we have begun to engineer a special safeguard. To learn more about our safety and security process, click here.

Baccatin III and Paclitaxel extraction from soybeans has not been researched and will need to be developed as we get fully modified plants.

References

Mutanda, I., Li, J., Xu, F. & Wang, Y. Recent Advances in Metabolic Engineering, Protein Engineering, and Transcriptome-Guided Insights Toward Synthetic Production of Taxol. Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol. 9, (2021).
USDA ERS - Adoption of Genetically Engineered Crops in the U.S. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically-engineered-crops-in-the-u-s/.
Zhu, L. & Chen, L. Progress in research on paclitaxel and tumor immunotherapy. Cell. Mol. Biol. Lett. 24, 40 (2019).
>Zhang, D., Yang, R., Wang, S. & Dong, Z. Paclitaxel: new uses for an old drug. Drug Des. Devel. Ther. 8, 279–284 (2014).
He, Y., Zhang, T., Sun, H., Zhan, H. & Zhao, Y. A reporter for noninvasively monitoring gene expression and plant transformation. Hortic. Res. 7, 1–6 (2020).