Production of Pharmaceutical Proteins in Genetically Modified Seeds

In the last few decades, with the progress of plant genetic engineering, the use of plants as bioreactors has emerged as a promising alternative in the production of new materials, such as biodegradable plastics, detergents, textiles, paper, nutritional components, vaccine antigens, and therapeutic products. In this chapter, we discuss the examples of stable expression of genes encoding for proteins of pharmaceutical interest (bioactive peptides, vaccine antigens, antibodies, diagnostic proteins) in seeds of model plants as well as crops such as rice, soybean, and maize. We discuss the regulatory and biosafety issues in plant molecular farming and other aspects involving product development and commercialization.