Seminar at University of Helsinki Institute of Biotechnology; April 23, 2002.

Plants as Factories for Therapeutic Proteins.

Agricultural biotechnology is moving into its third developmental phase: production in plants of useful chemicals such as designed oils, plastics, industrial enzymes, feed enhancers, and therapeutic proteins. In addition to cost reduction (operational and capital avoidance) and to address the potential shortage of capacity in the pharmaceutical industry, production of therapeutic proteins in plants offers the opportunity to deliver novel products with improved safety and quality characteristics not possible with conventional production technologies. Critical control and performance parameters to develop and to evaluate the use of plants for production of therapeutic proteins will be discussed together with the challenges related with developmental costs & time and regulatory acceptance.