Plants as a heterologous expression system for pharmaceutical proteins

Plants and plan culture cells are considered as a promising alternative to express heterologous pharmacological proteins such as antibodies, vaccines,… They are cheap to grow, they are able to do most of the post-translational modification typical of mammalian cells and they are safe as they are not contaminated by human pathogens. However, plant expression systems have still to be improved to compete with microbial or mammalian expression systems. For instance, proteolytic activity present in the apoplasm (external medium) decreases the yield of proteins targeted to the extracellular space. We have initiated a project aimed at identifying the major proteases present in the apoplasm of tobacco leaves as well as in the culture medium of tobacco cells. After gene cloning, silencing their expression by RNA interference will be performed.

 

Key publication

Navarre, C., Delannoy, M., Lefebvre, B., Nader, J., Vanham, D. and Boutry, M. (2006)
Expression and secretion of recombinant outer-surface protein A from the Lyme disesase agent, Borrelia burgdorfi, in Nicotiana tabacum suspension cells, in press