Fermentation Strategies for Production of Pharmaceuticals and Food Ingredients

Dear Colleagues,

Fermentation of microorganisms allows the production of industrially relevant compounds, including active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), food and feed supplements, products for cosmetics, agriculture, etc. The fermentative and the downstream processes have reached amazing levels of efficiency, being commercially competitive compared to isolation of products from plants and animals or to chemical synthesis.

Thus, products from microbes are incredibly diverse, ranging from very large molecules, such as proteins, monoclonal antibodies, nucleic acids, carbohydrate polymers, or even cells, to small molecules that are usually divided into primary metabolites, which are essential for vegetative growth, and secondary metabolites, i.e., those nonessentials for microbial growth.

Evolution of fermentative methodologies has achieved impressive production processes. For example, the classic production of beta-lactam antibiotics such as penicillin by Penicillium chrysogenum or cephalosporin by Acremonium chrysogenum, has given way to the production of new antibiotic molecules, including daptomycin, pristinamycin, dalbavancin, oritavancin, etc. In the same way, fermentative production of food ingredients, which includes amino acids, is a very well-known process mainly based on Corynebacterium glutamicum strains, as well as carotenoids (beta-carotene, lycopene, astaxanthin, zeaxanthin, canthaxanthin, etc.), or enzymes (beta-galactosidase, renin, chymosin, etc.).

This Special Issue will comprise current studies addressing problems and solutions for environmental, industrial, technical, and consumer challenges of “Microbial Fermentation” in the 21st century. Hence, the goal is to compile both recent innovative research results, as well as reviews on the production of microbial metabolites with interest in clinical (antibiotics), industrial (enzymes), agriculture (biopesticides), food and feed (carotenoids), or farming (pest antagonists) areas of application. Thus, manuscripts on industrial strain development, scale-up and scale-down methodologies, and downstream processes are welcomed.

Dr. José Luis Barredo
Dr. Carlos Barreiro
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fermentation is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• microbial fermentation
• APIs
• antibiotics
• steroids
• immunosuppressant
• carotenoids
• amino acids
• secondary metabolites
• primary metabolites