Conference on plant-made pharmaceuticals. 16-19 March 2003, Québec City, Québec, Canada

The Conference on Plant-Made Pharmaceuticals was an inaugural event organized by Molecular Farming Association Inc, a non-profit organization created in 2000 to support the emergence of plant-made biopharmaceuticals and plant-factory companies. The meeting was sponsored by the Government of Canada, the Gouvermement du Québec and the Société Générale de Financement, along with 20 companies involved in plant-made pharmaceuticals and related activities. Although there was very little discussion of new biopharmaceuticals under development with these systems, this was the first meeting where participants could survey the entire breadth of technologies and approaches that are being taken to produce biopharmaceuticals in transgenic plants. Participants also heard about the technical, manufacturing and regulatory issues confronting transgenic plant expression systems, as well as from 'new technology' companies that hav not previously presented in a public forum. There was a clear sense emerging from the meeting that the hurdles currently facing the industry will be overcome and that transgenic plant systems will eventually move into the mainstream of biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies.