Modified yeast makes opiates for the first time

Severe pain? Reach for the yeast. Genetically engineered yeasts can now efficiently produce a range of opiates, including morphine and oxycodone. 

With growing anxieties about supplies of opium poppies, it could be just what the doctor ordered.

Opiates are primarily used as painkillers and cough suppressants, and many of the most widely used opiates can be produced only from opium poppies (Papaver somniferum). Demand for these drugs is booming. But of the poppies farmed to supply these drugs, some 50 per cent are grown on the Australian island of Tasmania, so poor growing seasons can affect availability.

As drug companies search for new places to grow poppies, Christina Smolke from Stanford University, California, and her colleagues have been looking at getting yeast to make these complex drugs from simple sugars.

The benefits of yeast over poppies are manifold, Smolke says. She thinks that when the system is finished, a 1000-litre tank could produce as much morphine as a hectare of poppies. She believes the method, when completed, will also increase security. "It is difficult or impossible to secure many thousands of acres of poppy fields which are grown out in the open," she says. "Yeast will be grown in closed fermenters and can be kept in secure facilities."