Monoclonal Antibodies Expressed in Plants against Rabies Virus

1 Monoclonal Antibodies Expressed in Plants against Rabies Virus 

Rabies affects Southeast Asia and Africa and causes 50-60,000 deaths a year, yet this infectious disease does not receive a great deal of financial support because it is not a major cause of mortality in developed countries. 

Biopharmaceuticals in Plants Toward the Next Century of Medicine 

Treatment involves the application of rabies-specific antibodies that are infiltrated around the bite wound, in addition to immunization. The antibodies provide passive protection and are able to neutralize the virus. For developing countries, these antibodies are both too expensive and difficult to produce in large quantities. In addition to this, there is a dramatic shortage of rabies monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) available on a worldwide basis. The production of inexpensive and safe plant-derived MAbs would be useful in postexposure prophylaxis-global health benefit. 

Oleosins are a class of seed proteins associated with oil-body membranes in developing and mature embryos. As a simple purification procedure, foreign peptides have been routinely fused with oleosin for the production of foreign proteins in plant seeds. Oleosin fusion facilitates protein purification via cleavage of the fusion protein by an endonuclease, followed by a flotation centrifugation procedure in which the oleosin fusion protein floats to the surface with the oil bodies, thus removing recombinant protein along with the oil-body fraction. 

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