Callus Culture for the Production of Therapeutic Compounds

Abstract

Plant-derived compounds retain a special place in the treatment of various diseases across the world. Their application cuts across every class of disease, where they are found to be often equal or of greater potency, safer and cheaper than so-called "orthodox" medicines. These advantages have led to great interest in the use of callus culture as a biotechnological tool for the harnessing of these useful therapeutic compounds. Callus culture techniques aim to increase the yield of active constituents in cultured plant cells and to produce novel products on a large scale. These techniques have been applied to produce various classes of therapeutic compounds from diverse plant species through empirical determination of ideal culture conditions and other methods. This review presents at a glance the recent advances being made in the field of callus culture for the production of therapeutic compounds, with the aim of showing that it is time for the full potentials of callus culture to be exploited on a scale that will prove a useful weapon in the arsenal of clinical therapeutics.