Molecular pharming

Intact plants have been found in the past few years to be attractive for the production of complex recombinant pharmaceutical proteins. This process, known as molecular pharming, allows obtaining proteins of pharmacological interest in a low cost and safe pathogen-free procedure. 

The production of pharmaceutical proteins using hairy roots and rhizosecretion technology represents a safe and viable alternative to the use of whole plants for molecular pharming. As an example of the efficiency of this system, Medina-Bolivar and Cramer (2004) expressed the reporter protein GFP in tobacco hairy root cultures using a plastic sleeve bioreactor with a 5 L volume. Yields of 500 pg GFP/L after 21 days of incubation or 20% of total secreted protein were produced using this expression system, suggesting that rhizosecretion offers a promising production system for the production of biopharmaceuticals. 

NexGen Molecular Pharming Program. http //www.campnexgen.com/english/mf/ mfhtm 2004. 

It was a pleasure for me to not only share my thoughts with these very experienced collaborators in a joint project on molecular pharming , but also to coauthor this chapter. Here, we review the progress and challenges in the area of production of recombinant proteins, in particular biopharmaceuticals, in plants. Different expression platforms are summarized, including those based on the use of transgenic, transplastomic or transfected plants as production hosts. The quality and yield of recombinant proteins produced in and purified from plants, as well as progress in clinical trials with plant-made biopharmaceuticals, are described. 

Whereas, initially, the emphasis in molecular pharming was on unlimited scala-... 

Faye L, Boulaflous A, Benchabane M, Gomord V, Michaud D (2005). Protein modifications in the plant secretory pathway Current status and practical implications in molecular pharming. Vaccine 23 1770-1778. 

Chappell, J. (2008) Production platforms for the molecular pharming of alkaloid diversity. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 105, 7897-7898. 

Ramessar K, CapeU T,Christou P. 2008. Molecular Pharming in Ceretil Crops. Phytochem. Rev. 7 579-592. 

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