Plants have been used to make medicine for centuries; however, prior to the emergence of plant biotechnology, drugs were extracted or derived from the plant itself. The pain- and fever-relieving properties of willow tree bark were known long before chemists isolated its active ingredient and created acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) or Aspirin; the historical use of poppy-derived medicines led to the development of opiates such as codeine and morphine that continue to play an essential role in modern health care.

 

Today, plants and plant cell systems can be genetically engineered to serve as drug-producing factories for a wide array of antibodies and other protein-based therapeutics and vaccines, known collectively as plant-made pharmaceuticals (PMPs).

The emergence of plant-made pharmaceuticals

Early work on plant-made pharmaceuticals focused on using food crops, such as corn and rice, with the goal of creating a cheap, efficient way to deliver vaccines. Progress in this area slowed around 2002 due to concerns about cross contamination of other field crops, prompting interest to shift to non-food crops grown in controlled environments or isolated fields.

In the early 1990s, Canadian plant scientist Dr. J. Christopher Hall began developing plant-based technology to produce antibody drugs. Hall held the Canada Research Chair in Recombinant Antibody Technology from 2002-2014 at the University of Guelph where his lab developed the plant-based biopharmaceutical platform, now called vivoXPRESS® and licensed to PlantForm Corporation, the company he co-founded in 2008.

The plant advantage

Plant-based systems offer a number of important advantages over other fermentation systems for producing biologic drugs, including:

• lower costs
• quick, unlimited scale-up
• rapid, high-yield production
• enhanced safety (lower risk of contamination from animal and/or human pathogens)
• the ability to produce novel and complex molecules that animal cell cultures cannot