Pharming and transgenic plants

• Published in: Biotechnology Annual Review Vol. 13; pp. 115 - 147
• Main Authors: Liénard, David, Sourrouille, Christophe, Gomord, Véronique, Faye, Loïc
• Format: Book Chapter Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Netherlands Elsevier Science & Technology 2007
• Subjects: Agriculture - trends; Biotechnology; DNA; Drug Industry - trends; glycosylation; molecular farming; Plant Proteins - physiology; Plant Proteins - therapeutic use; plant-made pharmaceutical; Plants, Genetically Modified - metabolism; Protein Engineering - methods; recombinant protein; Recombinant Proteins - metabolism; Recombinant Proteins - therapeutic use; therapeutic protein; transgenic plant; therapeutic protein; glycosylation; plant-made pharmaceutical; molecular farming; recombinant protein; transgenic plant
• ISBN: 0444530320; 9780444530325
• ISSN: 1387-2656; 1875-5208
• DOI: 10.1016/S1387-2656(07)13006-4

Plant represented the essence of pharmacopoeia until the beginning of the 19th century when plant-derived pharmaceuticals were partly supplanted by drugs produced by the industrial methods of chemical synthesis. In the last decades, genetic engineering has offered an alternative to chemical synthesis, using bacteria, yeasts and animal cells as factories for the production of therapeutic proteins. More recently, molecular farming has rapidly pushed towards plants among the major players in recombinant protein production systems. Indeed, therapeutic protein production is safe and extremely cost-effective in plants. Unlike microbial fermentation, plants are capable of carrying out post-translational modifications and, unlike production systems based on mammalian cell cultures, plants are devoid of human infective viruses and prions. Furthermore, a large panel of strategies and new plant expression systems are currently developed to improve the plant-made pharmaceutical's yields and quality. Recent advances in the control of post-translational maturations in transgenic plants will allow them, in the near future, to perform human-like maturations on recombinant proteins and, hence, make plant expression systems suitable alternatives to animal cell factories.