Short communication Correct targeting of proinsulin in protein storage vacuoles of transgenic soybean seeds

Advancements in Transgenic Soy: From Field to Bedside

“…Soybean seeds represent an ideal target for the production of vaccines since soymilk-based formulations are safe and can be easily administered orally. Furthermore, soybean seeds are capable of storing vaccine antigens for many years at ambient temperatures without loss or degradation of the antigen [64][65][66]. Such features can reduce the need for a cold chain therefore reducing costs.…”

“…Like many pharmaceuticals derived from other expression systems, the potential for contamination along with high costs associated with production remain considerable for this hormone. To show that a soybean expression system could address some of these issues Cunha et al, used a sorghum γ-kafirin seed storage protein promoter and α-coixin PSV signal peptide to target recombinant proinsulin expression to soybean seeds [65]. Transgenic protein was stably expressed in seeds though accumulation levels were not reported.…”

Review Soybeans as bioreactors for biopharmaceuticals and industrial proteins

“…Cotyledonary PSVs are the preferable subcellular target for the long-term storage of recombinant proteins because they provide an oxidizing environment with low concentrations of amino peptidases and large quantities of protease inhibitors and ribosome inactivating proteins, thus minimizing protein degradation (Jolliffe et al, 2005;Cunha et al, 2010Cunha et al, , 2011a.…”

“…In addition, this protocol has been used to generate stable transgenic soybean lines expressing pharmaceutical molecules as diverse as hGH , human FIX (Cunha et al, 2011b), human insulin (Cunha et al, 2010), and other molecules (Vianna et al, 2011a).…”

“…Several molecules with different molecular weights and structures have been stably accumulated in the PSVs from transgenic soybean seeds using the α' subunit regulatory sequences of the soybean β-conglycinin and α-coixin, including hGH (2.9% TSP), human coagulation factor IX (FIX; 0.23% TSP), the mammary cancer marker scFvDIR83D4 (0.93% TSP), the anti-CD18 monoclonal antibody used to treat post-ischemic reperfusion injuries, the potent microbicides Cyanovirin-N (CV-N), scytovirin and griffithsin against-HIV, the immu-nogenic antigens CTAG, GAGE-2B and PLAC, against different forms of cancer, and human proinsulin (Cunha et al, 2010Vianna et al, 2011a).…”