Virologie & Mycologie
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Recent Advances in Virus Expression Vector Strategies for Vaccine Production in Plants

Kathleen Laura Hefferon

Plants offer tremendous advantages as cost-effective and safe platforms for the large-scale production of vaccines and other therapeutic proteins. Plant-derived vaccines represent a means by which to enhance vaccine coverage for children in developing countries, and can be administered orally to elicit a mucosal immune response. Plantderived vaccines possess the dual advantage of preventing the antigen from degradation as it passes through the gastrointestinal tract, while at the same time being capable of delivering an antigen to the mucosal immune system. Plant virus vectors have been designed to express vaccine epitopes as well as full therapeutic proteins in plant tissue. This review describes recent advances with respect to plant virus expression vectors used as production platforms for biopharmaceutical proteins.