Plants as Alternative Systems for Production of Vaccines

Jessica A. Chichester and Vidadi Yusibov

volume 3 | issue 4

july/august
Pages: 146 - 148

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Subunit vaccine production is typically associated with bacterial, yeast, insect or mammalian cell culture systems. Plants, however, are emerging as an alternative platform for producing vaccine antigens, and offer some advantages over other recombinant systems. In particular, plant virus-based transient expression systems are suitable for rapid engineering, ease of scale-up and cost-effective production of target antigens. In addition, this system provides an ideal approach for producing large quantities of vaccine antigens in a short period of time, which is particularly important when faced with natural outbreaks or accidental or intended release of bio-threat agents such as Bacillus anthrax and Yersinia pestis. This commentary reviews the production and evaluation of antigens made in plants in an attempt to develop vaccines against B. anthracis and Y. pestis.

Authors

Jessica A. Chichester

Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology, Newark, Delaware

Vidadi Yusibov

Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology, Newark, Delaware

We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link: