Plant-based vaccines for potential human application

Abstract

The worldwide need to produce safe and affordable vaccines with a minimum requirement of manufacture and processing, together with the advancements achieved in biotechnology, have promoted the development of efficient alternatives to traditional ones. One of the available options is the use of transgenic plants, not only as a protein production system but as an antigen transportation system as well, being capable of delivering antigens to the mucosal immune targets, becoming what is known as edible vaccines. The versatility of the plant production system allows for instance, to express and to accumulate foreign antigens in edible plant tissues. Thus, the hypothesis for the choice of plant-based vaccines is that once a plant-based vaccine is eaten, the susceptible host mounts a mucosal immune response against the antigen that is expressed in the plant, becoming protected against the pathogen from which the antigen was selected. This idea is still under study. Here, we described the basis of the system, the promising future and the possible drawbacks.

Plant-Based Vaccines: Production and Challenges

“…Biolistic method can be used to achieve two types of antigen expression in the transgenic plants: nuclear and chloroplast transformation. Nuclear transformation is done by integrating the desired gene into the nucleus of the plant cells via nonhomologous recombination [22,23]. The transgene might be inserted at the same locus or different loci to create the stable transgenic plants [22].…”

“…Nuclear transformation is done by integrating the desired gene into the nucleus of the plant cells via nonhomologous recombination [22,23]. The transgene might be inserted at the same locus or different loci to create the stable transgenic plants [22]. Even though the plants can inherit the transgene to the offspring, nuclear transgenic plants show a low expression level of antigens which lead to the requirement of a huge quantity of plant material to produce the right dose of administration and it might cause pleiotropic and position effects due to the random integration of the transgene [23][24][25].…”

“…Generally, this method allows a large fragment of foreign DNA to be inserted into the Ti-plasmid of A. tumefaciens. It is also a simple and cost-effective gene transfer method with higher efficiencies [20,22]. On the contrary, this method is considered as a rather slow process and produced a low yield [20].…”

Recent trends in vaccine delivery systems: A review

“…Edible vaccines[33] are produced by integrating gene cloning, tissue culture and plant transformation techniques. The first step in the process of creating an edible vaccine is the selection of a suitable immunogen.…”

Production of H5N1 Influenza Virus Matrix Protein 2 Ectodomain Protein Bodies in Tobacco Plants and in Insect Cells as a Candidate Universal Influenza Vaccine

“…Plant expression systems are advantageous due to their ability to carry out post-translational modifications similar to other eukaryotes, and in rapidly producing large quantities of antigen. This system is more economical since plants do not need expensive material for growth and maintenance, and it reduces concerns over human pathogens contaminating vaccine preparations (Nemchinov and Natilla, 2007 ; Gomez et al, 2009 ; Rybicki, 2009 ). Nemchinov and Natilla ( 2007 ) developed a candidate plant-based universal influenza vaccine by displaying the M2e epitope on the capsid protein (CP) of cucumber mosaic virus Ixora strain (CMV-Ix) in a potato virus X (PVX)-based vector.…”