Molecular farming for production of biopharmaceuticals and edible vaccines in plants

Abstract

Production of recombinant proteins such as edible vaccines, recombinant subunit vaccines, antibodies and other medical proteins in plants is referred to as molecular farming. Plants, as expression platform, have several advantages over mammalian or microbial systems such as low cost of production, fast scalability, absence of pathogenic microbes and their capability to synthesise complex proteins. This involves identification and isolation of the gene of a pathogen encoding antigenic protein and preparation of a suitable construct followed by its introduction to a suitable plant host system either through Agrobacterium -mediated or direct gene transfer technique for expression of the protein of interest. The plant parts of the transgenic plant containing the antigen are fed raw or the protein is extracted and administered. The cultivation of these plants needs to be done in a greenhouse or under in vitro condition in order to negate environmental and biosafety issues. Biofarming offers great opportunity to the pharmaceutical industry for production and supply of medicines at an affordable cost, particularly to the developing countries.