In recent years, plants have been increasingly explored for the production of biomedicines
and vaccine components. The two main advantages of plant systems are
low cost and a greater potential for scalability as compared to microbial or animal
systems. An additional advantage from the public health point of view is the high
safety compared to animal systems, which is important for vaccine production:
there are no known plant pathogens capable of replicating in animals and in
humans, in particular. A particular antigen or a protein has to be expressed in a plant
using one of the many available platforms; this antigen/protein subsequently needs
to be purified or processed, and later formulated into a vaccine or a therapeutic;
these need to be delivered to a human or animal body via an appropriate route.
Naturally, all these vaccines and therapeutics must be subjected to regulatory
approvals prior to their use. Thus, the challenge is to adapt plant-based platforms
for the production of cost-efficient biomedicals that can be approved by FDA for
use as vaccine components or therapeutics, which will be competitive against existing
vaccines and drugs.