Feasibility of antibody production in plants for human therapeutic use

From the description above, the diversity of antibodies as a class of potential therapeutic agents is weighed against the constraints of developing any therapeutic molecule. Although much of this limit is specific to the antibody design, plant-based production systems have a potential to impact commercialization by making larger volume products manageable, with lower up-front capital requirements. Due to their novel glycosylation pattern (Faye et al. 1989), plants at present may not create antibodies with all the functions of mammalian-glycosylated antibodies (Wright and Morrison 1994). This is not a limit for all current products. Success is dependent on fusing the efficient agriculture infrastructure with the narrow tolerances required for a drug production system. Further validation of plants as a production system will come as more therapeutics from plants follow the corn-produced material through human clinical trials.