Epimedium extract is derived from the precious Chinese medicinal herb Epimedium and has a significant therapeutic effect on liver cancer. Recently, our company and the “Enzyme Future” team from the College of Chemical Engineering of universities have developed high-performance enzyme preparations that can increase the conversion rate of icariin to 95%, resulting in a product purity of over 98%, greatly improving the yield and quality of icariin.
It is understood that the extraction of icariin is very difficult. Most manufacturers of icariin in the market use chemical methods to extract or directly synthesize icariin, but the yield is generally not high. Traditional enzymatic hydrolysis methods often use commercially available composite enzymes for bioconversion, but can only achieve the conversion of icariin, a single component, with a low conversion rate. Our company has formed a team to conduct research on the extraction and preparation of icariin. Mainly targeting the relevant characteristics of total flavonoids in Epimedium, unique and efficient biological enzymes have been developed using modern biotechnology such as genetic modification and cloning expression. This enzyme can directionally convert all 5 flavonoids in the total flavonoids of Epimedium into icariin, thereby achieving efficient preparation of icariin. On the basis of the original biological enzyme, innovative enzyme immobilization technology has also been integrated, enabling the enzyme to reach 90% of its initial activity after 20 repetitions. This method reduces the cost of enzyme use by 70%. In addition, compared to using chemical methods to prepare icariin, using biological methods reduces the use of chemical reagents and greatly reduces pollution.
At present, the icariin product developed by the team has been put into production, which will assist in the development of anticancer drugs worldwide and benefit more cancer patients in the future.
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