Abstract

During the last three decades’ therapeutic recombinant proteins have shown great promises for the treatment of a wide variety of human diseases. Recombinant proteins can be sorted in different categories including growth factors, hormones, thrombolytic agents, blood coagulation factors, enzymes and antibodies. Accordingly, to meet unique structural and functional properties of each protein different host systems have been employed for industrial manufacturing of therapeutic proteins.  Most common host systems include bacterial expression systems, yeasts, insect cells, mammalian cells and transgenic organisms. The increasing knowledge of proteins structure and function as well as disease mechanisms has led to development of engineered recombinant proteins with improved safety, half-life, stability and function. Enhancement of the production yield and reduction of the production cost is another concern in therapeutic protein production industry. In this review paper major technological progress as well as challenges toward recombinant protein production for therapeutic applications has been discussed.