Over the last few decades, the scope of biopharming has extended its roots from small-molecule chemicals to large-molecule proteins and other biopharmaceuticals like human insulin, gene therapies, and specialized antibiotic treatments. The fast scalability and the lower production costs of plant-made pharmaceuticals have scientists and the industry excited about the future of biopharming. There are currently 400 plant-grown drugs in development, according to reports.
No doubt, bio-pharming offers more affordable pharmaceutical drug development, including therapeutic proteins for the treatment of diseases like cancer and heart disease as well as vaccines for infectious diseases. Biopharming might be used to produce an increasing number of cutting-edge drugs for conditions including herpes, cancer, and infectious disorders. These medications are currently exceedingly expensive to produce using mammalian cells, and there is not enough capacity to address both the requirements of the present and the future.
For instance, the existing fermentation capacity is now being used by four pharmaceutical companies that require human antibodies. By reducing prices and enabling businesses to quickly ramp up capacity by simply planting additional land rather than needing to construct new production facilities or plants, which typically cost $600 million and take 5 to 7 years to develop, biopharming might resolve these problems. Having said that, in this article, we have focused on recent innovations in the biopharmaceutical sector that has the potential to change pharmaceutical drug development.
Plant and Biofactories Plants can be largely leveraged to develop, and harvest large-scale pharmaceutical proteins that can be consumed in their raw or partially harvested form. Moreover, as the use of drugs produces by plants comes with a minimized contamination challenge, the overall process of purification goes down. This can help pharmaceutical manufacturers diminish the overall cost of production. However, attaining a sufficient yield is critical as it directly influences the commercial viability in the long run. For instance, a US-based company CropTech collapsed due to its inability in attaining the production level required for commercial feasibility. According to Hilary Koprowski, MD, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, who pioneered the expression of animal proteins in plants.
“You can overcome it by using larger amounts of plants, which are much easier to use than mammalian cells, but we still would like to increase the yields.” The choice of plants plays a key role in determining the overall yield. For example, each of the four different groups of plants, such as leafy crops, Cereals, Fruits and vegetables, and fiber crops contains their own unique trials and challenges, that require speculation in each use case.
Tobacco: a Source of Protein Tobacco finds an extensive use case in the laboratory setting. Plant biotechnology company Chlorogen, St. Louis, chose this plant to produce its recombinant proteins. “Tobacco has been around for a long time; it is sort of a laboratory rat,” said David Duncan, Ph.D., president, and CEO. Additionally, because of the plant's quick growth and abundant protein synthesis, it is currently being extensively researched and altered to suit various use cases.
For instance, the Israeli firm BioBetter has created a genetically altered tobacco plant that generates the proteins required to form a medium for growing cells that can be used by businesses to manufacture goods like meat and fat using cell cultures. In recent years, tobacco has gained recognition in the biotech community as a productive way to produce medicines, vaccines, and antibodies. The plant's capacity to produce various useful proteins so effectively has led to the term "green bioreactor" being applied to it. Any additional substances, such as addictive or carcinogenic substances, are removed during the processing of tobacco.
Chloroplast Formulation Alternative organs targeted by plants include chloroplasts. Numerous instances of chloroplast-based molecular farming have been documented over time. There are two major benefits of being able to genetically alter chloroplasts. First, since chloroplasts are inherited from the mother, they cannot be passed on to other sexually compatible plants by pollen. Given the worries about gene transmission in the environment, this is extremely essential. Second, compared to the currently employed nuclear transformation of plants, protein synthesis through chloroplast transformation is hundreds of times more efficient.
However, many posttranslational modification processes, like glycosylation, cannot be carried out by chloroplasts. Purified human galactosyl and sialyl transferases have been used to in vitro modify plant-derived protein in an effort to improve this situation. In order to lower the cost of downstream processing, a number of molecular-level techniques have been developed, such as concentrating the proteins into the cell membrane, which is then purified through membrane fractionation. Secretion systems have another benefit in that recovering proteins does not require destroying plant cells.
Proceeding Forward A low-cost and plentiful source of medications may be offered by biopharming, a developing area of the biotechnology industry that entails engineering plants with genes that enable them to produce pharmaceutical substances. Pharmaceutical medications, such as vaccinations for infectious diseases and therapeutic proteins for the treatment of conditions like cancer and heart disease, will be more readily available and less expensively priced thanks to bio-pharming. Compared to existing manufacturing techniques, PMPs may be made at a much lower cost. As a result, the technology may help medical patients by offering a more cheap supply of medications and vaccinations. Uncertainty exists around the size of the cost reduction and the percentage of savings that will be distributed to customers.
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