Research project BL/V/30 (Research action BL)
1/1/2010-31/12/2013
Context and objectives
Plants and plant cells can be used as biofactories and offer many advantages as production systems for biopharmaceuticals: they pose no danger for contamination with human or animal pathogens, they allow production of properly folded and post-translationally modified complex proteins, and they allow cheap and/or fast production of biopharmaceuticals, depending on the exact platform used. Within this project, two plant based production systems are considered: (1) seed-specific expression in stably transformed plants and (2) plant cell cultures transformed with standard vectors or plant-virus-based vectors. On the one hand, improvements of these expression technologies are being developed, and on the other hand these plant-based production platforms are used for the production of veterinary vaccines. In this regard, two major viral diseases are targeted: i.e. avian influenza caused by H5N1 strain and the porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome caused by PRRSV.
Methodology
WP1: Optimization of vectors for production of an avian influenza vaccine and development of universal vectors for production of plant based biopharmaceuticals
WP2: Expression of PRRSV antigens in Nicotiana tabacum cell culture
WP3: Expression of antigens in Arabidopsis thaliana and soybean
WP4: Preclinical evaluation of plant produced antigens
