Optimization of medium components for extracellular glutaminase free asparaginase from Enterobacter cloacae

Bacterial asparaginase (L-Asparaginase amidohydrolase, E.C. 3.5.1.1) is a selective and highly effective chemotherapeutic agent extensively used over the world in first-line treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), Hodgkin disease, acute myelocytic leukemia, acute melanomonocytic leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, lymphosarcoma, reticlesarcoma and melanosarcoma (Verma et al., 2007). The anti-neoplastic action of asparaginase is explained on the fact that certain tumor cells, more specifically ALL tumor cells are deficient in their ability to synthesize the non-essential amino acid asparagine de-novo due to absence of asparagine synthetase (Asselin et al., 1989) but they require huge amount of asparagine to keep up their rapid malignant growth. To fulfill their nutritional requirement they use serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) asparagine. The administration of asparaginase as a chemotherapeutic drug rapidly hydrolyses serum as well as CSF asparagine into aspartate and ammonia (Lubkowski et al., ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 4 Number 1 (2015) pp. 296-309 http://www.ijcmas.com