Expression of antibody fragments in tobacco using transient and stable expression systems

Abstract

Plants are an attractive alternative to mammalian and microbial cell culture systems as a potential production platform for recombinant proteins. Apart from avoiding ethical problems associated with transgenic animals, plant systems have various advantages such as low cultivation/production costs, ease of scalability via standard agricultural practices, the possibility of using edible plant material expressing therapeutics (e.g. vaccines) as food or animal feed, and of using whole plants for bioremediation purposes. The use of plants also reduces the risk of product contamination by mammalian viruses, blood-borne pathogens, and bacterial toxins.