Plant Molecular Farming: Production of Virus-like Particles in Plants

Plant molecular farmingPlant molecular farming, or biopharmingBiopharming, is the production of heterologous proteins in plants or plant cells. This rapidly emerging expression platform has advantages including safety, cost-effectiveness, and ease of scalability. Recent advances in transient gene technologies based on viral vectorsViral vectors and Agrobacterium-mediated delivery into plant cells have revolutionized the plant expression field enabling rapid production and characterization of expressed proteins and have recently been implemented for large-scale heterologous protein production. The benefits of transient plant expressionTransient plant expression have been harnessed for the synthesis of virus-like particles (VLPsVirus like particles (VLPs)) to be used as vaccines against various human, veterinary, and zoonoticZoonotic pathogens. Composed exclusively of viral capsid proteins that self-assemble, virus-like particles (VLPsVirus like particles (VLPs)) mimic the size, capsid morphology, structural organization, and cellular tropism of native virus but lack the infectious genomic material. VLP-based vaccines can be composed exclusively of the capsid proteins of the target pathogen or can be chimericChimeric with the VLPVirus like particle (VLP) of a heterologous virus serving as a display platform for selected peptides and/or proteins of the target pathogen. Recent regulatory approvals of plant-made influenza and SARS CoV-2 VLP-based vaccines have helped establish plant expression as a commercially feasible option for heterologous protein production including VLPsVirus like particles (VLPs).