Plant molecular farming for the production of valuable proteins – Critical evaluation of achievements and future challenges

Recombinant proteins play an important role in many areas of our lives. For example, recombinant enzymes are used the food and chemical industries as high-quality for research, diagnostic therapeutic applications. The production is still dominated by expression systems based on microbes mammalian cells, although manufacturing plants – known molecular farming has been promoted alternative, cost-efficient strategy three decades. Several products have reached market, but number success stories limited industrial inertia driven perceptions low productivity, high cost downstream processing, regulatory hurdles that create barriers to translation. Here, we discuss technical economic factors required successful commercialization farming, consider potential future directions enable broader application platforms plants.