Plant Made Pharmaceuticals

Introduction;

From the start of earth medication is the most important part of our life. As its nature that changes occurs and due to these changes living organism effect. Changes consider good if they show good effect and bad if they show bad effect. So some changes effect on health badly and cause diseases. To cure these diseases human use different compounds, at first people use different plants and animals like pest to cure disease then they move toward the material that extracted from plants and animals. With the passage of time different techniques develop that help to improve our cure standard and we arrived at the age of chemical drugs. But chemicals drugs are not secure and also more expensive as different countries not bear these expenses. Then we move toward the technology use microorganism for the production of drugs and other medicines. We choose the microbes because of their fast reproduction system and very low cost. All going good with use of microbes but problem is that these systems have ability to change the structure and nature of drug and also there is a risk of infection. So we have to find a way that is safe and secure to produce drugs. So now we have answer that is plants, we use different plants for the production of proteins that use as a medicine. This method is called plant made pharmaceuticals. In this method we use plant as a factory to produce proteins that we later extract and purify and then use as medicine. For the production of pharmaceuticals in plants we manipulate the genetic makeup of plant and make them transgenic. In 1990 three different groups prove the concept of plant made pharmaceuticals.  Plant made pharmaceuticals also called plant made therapeutics. First PMT use for human beings that reach to phase III trials was a carrot cell suspension derived, Gaucher s disease.

There is a difference between PMP and nutraceuticals as in nutraceuticals we eat fruit than contain agents work as medicines but in pharmaceuticals that made from plants are extracted and then use.

Production platform;

There are generally two platforms that use for the production of PMP like,

1.  Stable transformation 
2. Virus infected plants

Stable transformation;

In this strategy, a permanent change happens in the genetic material of plant that mostly done by the insertion of new gene that contain desired character in the plant. So that character passes from generation to generation. And this process mostly did by the use of agrobacterium transformation. Here is an example like MucoRice-CTB. This is a vaccine that use for cholera treatment. And through experiment it is proven that it can be stable for 18 month at room temperature.

 

Virus-infected plants;

In this process the plants infected by the virus which are recombinant as their genetic material is manipulated. And then this this virus replicates many times and produce desired proteins that extracted and purified further. In this genes not become the part of plant. But there is a limitation with this system and that is no storage time of this product, as you have to harvest the product immediately. There is a vaccine that made in tobacco against the follicular b cells lymphoma. 

 

Why choose Plants;

There are different reasons to choose plants foe the production of pharmaceuticals like,

1. Flexible size of production
2. Offer a very low cost
3. Production can be done on large scale
4. Advantage that to express combined transgene expression in single cross.
5. Easy to aces their resources.
6. Easy to manipulate the genetic and as well as protein structure of pharmaceuticals.
7. Low risks of contamination such as infection that can happen when use microbes for production.
8. Last but not the least there is no ethical issue exist.

Risks for PMP production;

Everything has some loopholes, and in this case also some loop holes present like,

Due to these transgenic plants other simple edible crops is also effected like if this transgenic crop that contain some material that effect harmful health mix with edible food or also the waste from these crops can mix with animal feed. So in all cases it affects all living organism life. So ultimately it disturbs our food chain.

Another one is that contamination also increase when the gene transfer into a non-GMO crops.

Plant, factories of the future;

Today plant is an alternative source for the production of therapeutics. For example 250 acer of greenhouse space would be enough to grow potatoes to meet the demand of South East Asia.

Now we not only produce single proteins but we can produce multiple proteins. And another facility is that posttranslational modification not happens in this system as it shut down the native modification path.

Most attractive is that we can engineer multiple genes at a time in crop for the production of multiple proteins and also manipulate metabolic pathways in crop. Like Golden rice in which at a time three genes are insert.

By: Iqra Rehman

References;

https://www.slideshare.net/ManjuCp/plant-made-pharmaceuticals-seminar-by-manju-cp