https://pages.htgaa.org/2026b/nicolas-escobar-fierro/week-01-hw-project-ideas/index.htmlProject: Biomanufacturing of trabectedin (ET-743 / Yondelis) (1) What I want to biomanufacture and why: I want to biomanufacture trabectedin (ET-743, trade name Yondelis), an anticancer drug already clinically approved for soft-tissue sarcoma and recurrent ovarian cancer. It is not a hypothetical compound; it is a real, currently used medicine that saves lives—the issue is not whether it works, but how it is produced. There are two motivating factors. First, the scarcity is extreme: a full ton of wild tunicates is required to isolate just one gram of trabectedin. Second, the source species, Ecteinascidia turbinata, lives on Caribbean mangrove roots—a Latin American ecosystem—yet the drug is produced and controlled almost entirely in Europe. Its cost makes it inaccessible to most healthcare systems in the region where the organism originates. I want to address this issue of biotechnological sovereignty: producing the compound without relying on the harvesting of tons of wild tunicates.Hugoen