Development Of Plant-based Vaccines Research Articles

An Extensive Review on the Development of Plant-Based Vaccines against SARS-Cov-2 and Respiratory Disorders Using Plant Biotechnology Platform

The COVID-19 pandemic is the most recent of numerous pathogenic viral pandemics that have posed risks to global health. Its exponentially expanding global transmission is placing pressure on the global health system. There are currently a large number of COVID-19 candidate vaccines on the market, and there is fierce worldwide competition to obtain the most vaccinations for each nation. The main objective among several nations during the exceptional COVID-19 epidemic has been to build herd immunity through the planning of large-scale vaccination efforts. However, the availability of vaccines has been a challenge for developing countries. However, there are strains in the world's vaccine manufacturing as a result of the high demand. This international effort aims to develop plant-based heterologous expression systems, virus-like particles (VLPs)-vaccines, antiviral drugs, a rapid supply of antigen-antibodies for detecting kits, and plant-origin bioactive compounds that boost immunity and provide tolerance to fight against virus infection, also includes the use of a plant biotechnology-based expression system for vaccine production. Due to possible benefits including low cost, high manufacturing volume, and physicochemical characteristics, the idea of a plant-based vaccination has gained more and more momentum in recent years. By utilising local commodities, we suggest plant-based vaccines as an appealing alternative to widespread and inexpensive vaccination methods against COVID-19 in this review. Additionally, we discussed the processes of action, necessary standards, and prospects for applying unique biotechnology tools in near future.

Plant-Derived Recombinant Vaccines against Zoonotic Viruses.

Emerging and re-emerging zoonotic diseases cause serious illness with billions of cases, and millions of deaths. The most effective way to restrict the spread of zoonotic viruses among humans and animals and prevent disease is vaccination. Recombinant proteins produced in plants offer an alternative approach for the development of safe, effective, inexpensive candidate vaccines. Current strategies are focused on the production of highly immunogenic structural proteins, which mimic the organizations of the native virion but lack the viral genetic material. These include chimeric viral peptides, subunit virus proteins, and virus-like particles (VLPs). The latter, with their ability to self-assemble and thus resemble the form of virus particles, are gaining traction among plant-based candidate vaccines against many infectious diseases. In this review, we summarized the main zoonotic diseases and followed the progress in using plant expression systems for the production of recombinant proteins and VLPs used in the development of plant-based vaccines against zoonotic viruses.

A Perspective on the Development of Plant-Made Vaccines in the Fight against Ebola Virus

The Ebola virus (EBOV) epidemic indicated a great need for prophylactic and therapeutic strategies. The use of plants for the production of biopharmaceuticals is a concept being adopted by the pharmaceutical industry, with an enzyme for human use currently commercialized since 2012 and some plant-based vaccines close to being commercialized. Although plant-based antibodies against EBOV are under clinical evaluation, the development of plant-based vaccines against EBOV essentially remains an unexplored area. The current technologies for the production of plant-based vaccines include stable nuclear expression, transient expression mediated by viral vectors, and chloroplast expression. Specific perspectives on how these technologies can be applied for developing anti-EBOV vaccines are provided, including possibilities for the design of immunogens as well as the potential of the distinct expression modalities to produce the most relevant EBOV antigens in plants considering yields, posttranslational modifications, production time, and downstream processing.

A novel methodology to develop a foot and mouth disease virus (FMDV) peptide-based vaccine in transgenic plants

The expression of antigens in transgenic plants has been increasingly used as an alternative to the classical methodologies for antigen expression in the development of experimental vaccines. However, an important limitation in most cases is the low concentration of the recombinant antigens in the plant tissues, which reduces the possibilities of practical applications. Because the site of insertion of the transferred DNA into the cellular chromosomal DNA is at random, different levels of foreign protein expression in independent transformants is expected. Strategies to allow the evaluation of a high number of the transgenic individuals, usually an expensive and very time consuming process, would permit the selection of those plants presenting the highest levels of recombinant protein expression. Here, we present the development of an experimental immunogen based in the expression of a highly immunogenic epitope from foot and mouth disease virus (FMDV) fused to the glucuronidase ( gus A) reporter gene, which allows selection of the transgenic plants by the ß-glucuronidase (ßGUS) enzymatic activity. We produced transgenic plants of alfalfa expressing the immunogenic site between amino acid residues 135–160 of structural protein VP1 (VP135–160), fused to the ßGUS protein. Plants expressing the highest levels of the immunogenic epitope VP135–160, analyzed by Western blot, were efficiently selected based on their levels of ßGUS enzymatic activity. The FMDV epitope expressed in plants was highly immunogenic in mice which developed, after immunization, a strong anti-FMDV antibody response against a synthetic peptide representing the region VP135–160, to native virus VP1, and to purified FMDV particles. Additionally, these mice were completely protected against experimental challenge with the virulent virus. To our knowledge, this constitutes the first report of a peptide-based vaccine produced in transgenic plants that induces a protective immune response when used in experimental hosts. Also, these results demonstrated the possibility of using a novel and simple methodology for obtaining transgenic plants expressing high levels of foreign immunogenic epitopes, which could be directly applied in the development of plant-based vaccines.