Agtech infrastructure for pandemic preparedness

Contributions of the international plant science community to the fight against human infectious diseases – part 1: epidemic and pandemic diseases

“…Plant biotechnology has much to offer in the fight against infectious diseases, from the provision of emergency testing infrastructure (Webb et al, 2020) to the manufacture of smallmolecule drugs, recombinant antivirals, subunit vaccines, engineered viruses and virus-like particle (VLP) vaccines, therapeutic proteins, antibodies and diagnostic reagents (Capell et al, 2020;Daniell et al, 2016Daniell et al, , 2019Daniell et al, , 2021McDonald and Holtz, 2020;Rosales-Mendoza, 2020;Tus e et al, 2020). Although plants have been used as a platform for the production of pharmaceutical proteins for more than 30 years (Fischer and Buyel, 2020;Ma et al, 2003a) (Bradley and Bryan, 2019;Kobres et al, 2019).…”

“…Plant biotechnology has much to offer in the fight against infectious diseases, from the provision of emergency testing infrastructure (Webb et al ., 2020 ) to the manufacture of small‐molecule drugs, recombinant antivirals, subunit vaccines, engineered viruses and virus‐like particle (VLP) vaccines, therapeutic proteins, antibodies and diagnostic reagents (Capell et al ., 2020 ; Daniell et al ., 2016 , 2019 , 2021 ; McDonald and Holtz, 2020 ; Rosales‐Mendoza, 2020 ; Tusé et al ., 2020 ). Although plants have been used as a platform for the production of pharmaceutical proteins for more than 30 years (Fischer and Buyel, 2020 ; Ma et al ., 2003a ), their potential advantages in terms of scale and speed were highlighted by the slow response of traditional manufacturing platforms to epidemics of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002/2003, H1N1/09 influenza in 2009, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2012, Ebola in 2014/2015 and Zika in 2016/2017 (Bradley and Bryan, 2019 ; Kobres et al ., 2019 ).…”

Contributions of the international plant science community to the fight against infectious diseases in humans—part 2: Affordable drugs in edible plants for endemic and re‐emerging diseases

“…Plant biotechnology has multiple roles in the fight against infectious diseases, from the provision of emergency testing infrastructure (Webb et al ., 2020 ) to the manufacture of small‐molecule drugs, biologics (vaccines and therapeutics) and diagnostic reagents (Capell et al ., 2020 ; McDonald and Holtz, 2020 ; Rosales‐Mendoza, 2020 ; Tusé et al ., 2020 ). The utilization of plants to provide injectable drugs for the treatment of epidemic and pandemic diseases is reviewed in detail in our sister article in this issue (Lobato Gómez et al ., 2021 ).…”

The Emergency Response Capacity of Plant-Based Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing-What It Is and What It Could Be

“…This would support the prevent stage by ensuring a large portion of the global population can be supplied with safe and low-cost vaccines, for example, to avoid recurrent outbreaks of the disease. Similarly, existing agricultural capacities may be re-directed to pharmaceutical production as recently discussed (Webb et al, 2020). There will be indirect benefits during the recover phase because the speed of plant-based production systems will allow the earlier implementation of measures that bring system functionality back to normal, or at least to a "new or next normal. "…”