Abstract
Plants offer tremendous advantages as cost-effective and safe platforms for the large-scale production of vaccines and other therapeutic proteins. Plant-derived vaccines represent a means by which to enhance vaccine coverage for children in developing countries, and can be administered orally to elicit a mucosal immune response. Plantderived vaccines possess the dual advantage of preventing the antigen from degradation as it passes through the gastrointestinal tract, while at the same time being capable of delivering an antigen to the mucosal immune system. Plant virus vectors have been designed to express vaccine epitopes as well as full therapeutic proteins in plant tissue. This review describes recent advances with respect to plant virus expression vectors used as production platforms for biopharmaceutical proteins.
Highlights
The leading cause of infant mortality in developing countries persists from infectious diseases which are readily treatable in the industrialized world
Lindbo, et al, [40], utilized a deconstructed Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) expression vector in conjunction with a viral RNA silencing suppressor to produce high levels of recombinant protein within a week post-infection. Another group produced a vaccine against the endemic disease plague, derived from the causative bacterial agent Yersinia pestis, using the deconstructed tobacco mosaic virus-based system [41]
Production levels of up to 300 mg/kg leaf fresh weight were determined for Hepatitis B virus surface antigen (HBsAg) expressed in the TMV-based MagnICONTM viral vector expression system
Summary
The leading cause of infant mortality in developing countries persists from infectious diseases which are readily treatable in the industrialized world. Applications involving plant virus vectors can be restricted as a result of insert size or narrow host range To circumvent problems such as these, ‘deconstructed’ or modular versions of plant viruses have been under development for use as expression systems (Figure 1) [27,28]. Using this approach, deconstructed versions of the RNA viruses Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), Potato virus X (PVX), and Cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) RNA-2 as well as the DNA geminiviruses Bean yellow dwarf virus (BeYDV) and Beet curly top virus (BCTV) have successfully been used been used to produce a variety of vaccine proteins in plants [2931].
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