Towards molecular farming in the future: moving from diagnostic protein and antibody production in microbes to plants

Molecular farming of pharmaceuticals in plants has the potential to provide almost unlimited amounts of recombinant proteins for use in disease diagno sis and therapy. Transgenic plants are attracting interest as bioreactors f or the inexpensive production of large amounts of safe, functional, recombi nant macromolecules, such as blood substitutes, vaccines and antibodies, In some cases, the function of expressed recombinant proteins can be rapidly analysed by expression in microbes or by transient expression in intact or virally infected plants. Protein production can be increased by upscaling p roduction in fermenters, using yeast- or plant-suspension cells or by using transient-expression systems. Stable transgenic plants can be used to prod uce leaves or seeds rich in the recombinant protein for long-term storage o r direct processing. This demonstrates the promise for using plants as bior eactors for the molecular farming of recombinant therapeutics, diagnostics, blood substitutes and antibodies. We anticipate that this technology has t he potential to greatly benefit human health by making safe recombinant pha rmaceuticals widely available.