Strategies for the ameliorated production of pharmaceutically important glycosides via plant cell culture

Plants are the primary source of essential secondary metabolites that are medicinally useful for drug discovery and treatment of several ailments, and on the other hand, the same bioactive compounds are commonly utilized by plants in various important functions such as defense from herbivores and resistance against abiotic stress and diseases. Due to overexploitation, these medicinal plants are becoming threatened and eventually facing extinction. Hence, there is an urgent need to synthesize plant-derived bioactive compounds on a commercial scale via nonconventional approaches to meet the demand of the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food industries. Glycosides are a heterogeneous and diverse group of secondary metabolites with significant bioactivity. Since the conventional method of their synthesis comes up with several limitations, in vitro cell suspension culture acts as a suitable alternative technique. Despite significant advances in this sector over the last few decades, still the rate of production of glycosides is exceedingly low due to many obstacles in scaling up production and commercial success is limited as well. This chapter encompasses numerous reported findings on various physical and chemical factors that influence the pharmaceutically important glycoside production via cell suspension culture. It includes starting from the selection of cell line, optimization of the culture media components, culture growth conditions, elicitation, precursor feeding, immobilization, permeabilization, and scaling up of glycoside production via bioreactors. Furthermore, this chapter highlights several undiscovered regions and limitations associated with glycoside production via cell culture of several medicinal plant species. The information analyzed in this chapter may act as a platform for several scientists and researchers for further experimentation in this sector in the near future. There is a great scope for researchers to study cell physiology, its metabolism, and the pathways that regulate glycoside production. However, cooperation between biochemical engineers and biologists is necessary that will help researchers to ameliorate the production of pharmaceutically important plant-derived compounds on a commercial scale.