Plant-derived vaccine

Seed-specific production of LTB by Streatfield et al. [28] resulted in expression levels of up to 1.8% total soluble protein (TSP), and two separate maize breeding programs have increased antigen production by fivefold [28] and tenfold [27]. The investigations of Chikwamba et al. [27] regarding the expression of LTB in maize are among the first to include the use of particle bombardment transformation for the production of plant-derived vaccines. 

Clinical Trials with Plant-derived Vaccines 1151... 

The results of five clinical trials involving orally delivered plant-derived vaccines have been published [26,45,69-71]. With the exception of LTB, each study used dif-... 

Conventional pharmaceutical development has been estimated to costs roughly between 100 million and 800 million per product, and takes over 12 years. The development of conventional vaccines may be somewhat less costly, although new recombinant DNA-derived subunit vaccines produced in fermentation-based systems are likely to be similar to protein pharmaceuticals in development costs. At present, none of the major pharmaceutical companies is directing funding towards the development of plant-derived vaccines for infectious diseases. This may reflect ... 

The WHO met in January 2005 and set up guidelines for plant-derived vaccines, including the disposal of waste materials. The meeting concluded that the present guidelines on traditional vaccine development and evaluation can be applied to edible vaccines. 

Tacket, C.O. (2005). Plant-derived vaccines against diarrheal diseases. Vaccine 23(15) 1866-1869. 

This chapter illustrated the broad spectrum of uses for plant-derived vaccines and therapeutic proteins. Many of the biopharmaceuticals listed in this chapter were developed in transgenic tobacco or potato plants. While tobacco is not ideal for the expression of vaccine proteins nor is raw potato ideal for oral consumption, they are both relatively easy to work with and have been well characterized, making them useful for proof-of-concept studies. The use of plants for production systems and delivery vehicles holds great promise for future biopharmaceutical development. Proteins can be produced in plants while remaining biologically functional they can be scaled up for large production and purified inexpensively and with relative ease. The following chapters describe the many attributes of plant-made biopharmaceuticals in more detail. 

Dalsgaard, K., Uttenthal, A., Jones, T.D., Xu, R, Merryweather, A., and Hamilton, W.D.O. (1997). Plant-derived vaccine protects target animals against viral disease. Nat. Biotechnol. 15 248-252. 

An increased awareness of the potentials of global bioterrorism has also prompted the investigation of nonconventional ways to create inexpensive vaccines on a rapid, massive scale if necessary (Hilleman, 2002). Plant-derived vaccines offer a potential new defense against biological warfare agents as they are inexpensive and can be easily scaled up to millions of doses within a short time frame. The vaccine can be stored for several... 

---