[Hairy roots culture as a source of valuable biopharmaceuticals]

Plants have been exploited as a source of medicinal substances for years. Nowadays, achievements of modern science, including molecular biotechnology, allow their huge potential to be utilized. They have become a promising platform for the production of valuable compounds such as biopharmaceuticals. Among the various plant systems used for this purpose, hairy root cultures are also applied for the production of recombinant proteins and secondary metabolites. For this purpose plant cells of selected species are genetically transformed using different strains of Agrobacterium rhizogenes carrying the desired genes. The next steps of this process include stable and efficient expression of these genes. Hairy root cultures exhibit a number of features which make them attractive compared to various pro- and eukaryotic cell systems including other plant models. Their main advantages are: relatively low production costs, ease of scale-up, production of compounds typical for eukaryotic cells with post-translational modifications, biological safety, and in many cases there is no need for complex purification techniques of the final product. Several compounds that are successfully obtained using this production strategy are valuable pharmaceuticals. This group includes selected cytokines, vaccine antigens and antibodies.