Plantibodies: Paving Novel Avenues for Immunotherapy

Infectious disease accounts for approximately 25 % of all deaths worldwide, 63 % of death in children and 45 % of the death has been reported from developing countries. Vaccination is one of the effective means in preventing infectious diseases. World Health Organization states that 30 million children born every year are deprived of immunization by the modern standards available in the country. The above scenario alerts the need for large scale production of vaccines against infectious diseases so as to increase the global immunization compliance. Strategies for implementation of novel routes for immunization and the production of edible vaccines are the areas of future research work. [1] The concept of green revolution originated in 1960s in response to the prodigious transfer of technology coordinated through agricultural agencies [2] The utilization of transgenic (genetically modified) plants for the expression of therapeutic recombinant proteins is gaining wide acceptance in the scientific community [3] Plantibody is an antibody produced by the genetically modified plants [4] Transgenic plants are the ones, whose DNA is modified by means of genetic engineering technology. [5] The original description of antibodies derived from plants demonstrated the principle of coexpression of two recombinant gene products in plants that were correctly folded and assembled in to a molecule that was functionally identical to its mammalian counterpart [3] Transgenic plant as expression vectors can revolutionize the large scale production of vaccines, therapeutic and diagnostic recombinant proteins.