Edible vaccine: a new platform for the development of malaria vaccine

The plasmodium vivax is the most prevalent malaria parasite. The world essentially needs a malaria vaccine to alleviate the human suffering associated with the parasitic disease that kills more than one million people annually. The use of plants for the expression of the proteins of disease-causing vehicle in transgenic plants has been increasingly used in the development of experimental vaccines, largely oriented to the improvement of edible vaccines. Currently, through modern biotechnology, there has been a revival in obtaining a new edible vaccine against the malaria parasite from plant sources. Through genetic alteration, it is now recognized that plants are potentially a new source of recombinant proteins including vaccines, antibodies, blood substitutes, and other therapeutic entities. Plant-derived antibodies and other proteins are mostly valuable since they are free of mammalian viral vectors and human pathogens. Although significant progress has been achieved in the research for edible vaccine in Plasmodium falciparum, limited progress has been made in the Plasmodium vivax component that might be eligible for edible vaccine development. We describe the overall strategy recommended by plants, which include high biomass production and low cost of cultivation, relatively fast "gene to protein" time, low capital and operating costs, outstanding scalability, eukaryotic posttranslational modifications, and a relatively high protein yield.