Use of antigens derived from plants opens new ways of pandemic influenza vaccine development
Shoji Y, et al. Immunogenicity of hemagglutinin from A/Bar-headed Goose/Qinghai/1A/05 and A/Anhui/1/05 strains of H5N1 influenza viruses produced in Nicotiana benthamiana plants. Vaccine (2009),doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2009.01.051. Link
Description: This study reports the immunogenicity in mice of a research vaccine produced using an innovative vaccine generating system that could be used to supplement the current egg-based or cell-based production. The study describes the engineering. production and testing of inactivated recombinant haemagglutinin (HA) from two clade 2 H5N1 viruses, A/Bar-headed Goose/Qinghai/1A/2005 and A/Anhui/1/2005, in a pla Nicotiana benthamiana plants. These plant-produced HA antigens induced serum HI (haemagglutinin inhibition) and VN (viral neutralization) antibody responses in mice demonstrating the potential of plant-produced HA-based pandemic influenza vaccines.
The authors argued that plants have already been proven to provide a promising production system because they are the largest and most economical generators of biomass, they posses eukaryotic post-translational protein modification machinery and they do not harbour human pathogens. They go on to mention that many different plant-based production platforms for subunit vaccines and other recombinant pharmaceutical proteins have already been described including transgenic plants, transplastomic plants, transiently transformed plants, virus-infected plants and plant cell cultures. They also report that the main advantages of using plant systems for the production of vaccine against HPAI are their independence from live influenza viruses and egg-based production systems as well as their cost and time efficiency.
Source: http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/health_content/sciadv/090319_sciadv.aspx