Microbial therapeutic enzymes: A promising area of biopharmaceuticals

Abstract

• Microbial enzymes are prospective biopharmaceuticals. • They are potential therapeutic agents being economical, consistent, convenient in isolation and genetic manipulation. • They have diverse applications as enzybiotics, digestive-aids, anti-inflammatory, fibrinolytic and anti-cancer agents. • Exploring their curative potential and optimization of pharmacokinetics using suitable nanocarriers can revolutionize healthcare. Biopharmaceuticals is a rapidly emerging field that explores and employs biological organisms and their products for therapeutic applications. Enzymes are remarkable biocatalysts that accelerate the rate of biochemical reactions manifold. They possess several extraordinary features like immense catalytic potential, high substrate specificity as well as pH and temperature optima. Due to these extraordinary attributes, they find diverse clinical applications. They are being increasingly employed for the treatment of a wide spectrum of diseases, either alone or in combination with other therapies. Functional enzymes can be isolated from plants, animals or microorganisms. Enzymes originally isolated from microbes offer diverse advantages including ease of isolation, high consistency, higher yields, economic feasibility, high stability and candid production via recombinant DNA technology using microbes as host cells. Also the processes of product modification as well as optimization are easier for microbial enzymes as compared to those obtained from animals and plants. Thus microbial enzymes display enthralling features and opportunities, and form an important subclass of modern biopharmaceuticals. In this review, we focus on the curative potential of microbial enzymes including enzybiotics, digestive aids, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer and fibrinolytic agents. This information will help to highlight and further explore their therapeutic potential which is fast gaining popularity and assisting healthcare.