PlantForm is negotiating for the rights to a powerful proprietary technology for the manufacture of biological drug substances in tobacco plants. The novel technology platform has been developed by the Hall laboratory at the University of Guelph to produce a broad range of antibody and protein drugs within the leaves of greenhouse-grown tobacco plants. It will be used to produce fully active recombinant proteins and antibody drugs at low cost in the plant-based bioreactors. These drugs are formatted to minimize any potential adverse effects in man.
The company will establish the commercial application of the production platform and will initially focus on a well understood and accepted large market Biosimilar antibody drug . Dr. Hall’s laboratory in proof of principle studies has already shown that this drug can be easily manufactured at low cost using tobacco plants, and has found the properties of the plant-derived antibody comparable to the name brand version.
