Genetic Engineering of Plants for Vaccine, Recombinant Protein, and Drugs Production for Health Security

Molecular farming is a useful technique to obtain valuable products from plants ranging from simple metabolites to recombinant proteins. The latter group can be divided into two main subgroups: pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical proteins. In this chapter, we have addressed the molecular tools applied for the expression of recombinant proteins in the different types of vegetal hosts along with the vector designs usually used for this purpose. We have also discussed ongoing research and prospects of cell-culture-based bioproducts. Apart from cell cultures, we exposed other kinds of hosts derived from plants, such as cell lysates. There have been many attempts to produce recombinant proteins of industrial importance in plants over the years. Plants have numerous advantages that make them a better option compared to other hosts that are normally used. These include the high scalability for mass production while using transgenic whole plants. But there are also several liabilities, partly due to the traditionalism associated with the pharma industry and the regulation problems. Nowadays, most of these problems have been solved, and molecular farming is experiencing its resurgence.