EDIBLE VACCINES

The ultimate vaccine is an oral vaccine which given once protects agai nst a multitude of diseases. Furthermore this ultimate vaccine needs t o be very stable and inexpensive to produce. Probably this latter cond ition can be met only if the vaccines are produced in plants. Such vac cines are called 'edible vaccines'. Edible vaccines can be produced in plants in many ways, Using recombinant plant-virus, CPMV, it was show n that plants can produce massive amounts of chimaeric virus particles which protect after a single injection the target animal against dise ase. The final step, oral adminstration, is being adressed at present. Preliminary experiments by others suggest that this step may be solve d sooner than expected.