Plant-Produced Monoclonal Antibody as Immunotherapy for Cancer

Abstract

Plant-based products have expanded to include cancer immunotherapy, which has made great strides over recent years. Plants are considered inexpensive and facile production platforms for recombinant monoclonal antibody (mAb) due to the latest advancements and diversification of transgenic techniques. Current human biologics, including those based on mAbs produced by fermentation technologies using primarily mammalian cell cultures, have been replaced by plant-produced mAbs, which are cost effective, more scalable, speedy, versatile, and safer. Moreover, the use of animals for antibody production is always a question of ethical unambiguity, and the suitability of animal models for predicting the immunogenicity of therapeutic mAbs in humans and transposition of the immunogenic potential of therapeutic antibodies in animals to the human situation has no scientific rationale. Quite a few plant-based mAbs are approved for the treatment of cancer, ranging from tumors to hematological malignancies. This review focuses on the cutting-edge approaches for using plant-derived mAbs to suppress or prevent cancers. It also discusses the avenues taken to prevent infection by oncogenic viruses, solid tumors, lymphomas, and other cancerous conditions using mAbs. The review emphasizes the use of a plant-derived monoclonal antibody as a premier platform to combat cancer.

Functional Characterization of Pembrolizumab Produced in Nicotiana benthamiana Using a Rapid Transient Expression System

“…The use of plant expression systems for the production of pharmaceutically important proteins ( Bulaon et al, 2020 ; Hanittinan et al, 2020 ), vaccines ( Marsian et al, 2017 ; Rosales-Mendoza et al, 2017 ), diagnostic reagents ( Rattanapisit et al, 2021 ), and antibodies ( Kopertekh et al, 2019 ; Hurtado et al, 2020 ; Rattanapisit et al, 2020 ) were documented. In addition, the prior studies reported that the generation of plant-made protective immunogen and therapeutic antibodies ( Dent et al, 2016 ; Rattanapisit et al, 2019a , b ; Nessa et al, 2020 ; Yiemchavee et al, 2021 ).…”

Frontiers in the Standardization of the Plant Platform for High Scale Production of Vaccines

“…Plant stable transformation allows the development of genetically modified (GM)/transgenic plants with well-defined master and working seed banks to be used for consecutive batches, leading to large-scale production [ 31 , 32 ]. Furthermore, cross-fertilization between transgenic plants producing two different recombinant proteins can generate siblings that express multiple recombinant genes, an approach useful for monoclonal antibodies purification [ 33 ].…”

Alternative Methods to Animal Use for Monoclonal Antibody Generation and Production

“…The plant system offers important advantages, such as high production capacity, low cost in the large-scale cultivation process, in addition to avoiding ethical problems associated with animals [98]. Another important advantage of using this system is found in post-translational protein modifications, which occur in plant cells in a similar way to animal cells, as well as in the correct assembly of complex molecules, such as antibodies, are aided by chaperones that mediate folding and the formation of disulfide bonds, while the addition of N-glycans is carried out by specific cellular glycosyltransferases.…”

“…It is possible to put the product on the market quickly, which ends up decreasing the cost of production. Plants also reduce screening costs for bacterial toxins, viruses, and prions because they are less likely to introduce animal pathogens than mammalian cells or animals [98].…”