Can plant-derived vaccines improve global human health?

Plants offer great advantages as production platforms for vaccines, antibodies and other biopharmaceutical proteins. Plantderived vaccines provide an alternative to conventionally- made vaccines by enabling delivery to be safe and effective through the oral consumption of edible plant tissue. Since a large number of infec-tious diseases enter the body through mucosal surfaces including the gut, vaccines which can be expressed within edible plant tissue present a select advantage. Not only do the plant tissues act as the delivery vehicle, they protect the antigen as it passes through the harsh environment of the gastrointestinal tract. Another advantage lies in the fact that, in contrast to bacterial expression systems, plants are capable of producing recombinant antigens that undergo post-translational modifications which resemble their mammalian-de-rived counterparts