£89.50
Recombinant Proteins From Plants
Methods and Protocols
Introduction
Altogether, the biochemical, technical and economic limitations on existing prokaryotic and eukaryotic expression systems and the growing clinical demand for complex therapeutic proteins have created substantial interest in developing new expression systems for the production of therapeutic proteins. To that end, plants have emerged in the past decade as a suitable alternative to the current production systems, and today their potential for production of high quality, much safer and biologically active complex recombinant pharmaceutical proteins is largely documented.
Current Research and Methods
The chapters in this volume, contributed by leaders in the field, sum up the state-- the-art methods for using a variety of different plants as expression hosts for pharmaceutical proteins. Several production platforms are presented, ranging from seed- and leaf-based production in stable transgenic plant lines, to plant cell bioreactors, to viral or Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression systems.
Focus on Antibodies
Currently, antibodies and their derived fragments represent the largest and most important group of biotechnological products in clinical trials. This explains why the potential of most production platforms is illustrated here principally for antibodies or antibody fragments with acknowledged potential for immunotherapy in humans.
Comparison and Test Systems
In addition, a comparison of different plant expression systems is presented using aprotinin, a commercial pharmaceutical protein, as a test system.
Challenges and Opportunities
Although multiple books and monographs have been recently published on molecular pharming, there is a noticeable dearth of bench step-by-step protocols that can be used quickly and easily by beginners entering this new field.
