Plant factory for therapeutics

Molecular farming is an easy, fast, and safe method for producing vaccines and therapeutic proteins in plants. Now a team of Fraunhofer researchers from the USA has built up a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) compliant plant factory.

“We use tobacco plants because they multiply and maintain our virus vectors very well. In addition, they grow fast yielding, large quantities of biomass in a short period of time,” says Vidadi Yusibov from the Fraunhofer Center for Molecular Biotechnology (CMB). It has already been demonstrated in the laboratory that the method works well. But can this approach be scaled for mass production? The researchers have already cleared the first hurdles: they have developed a fully integrated, automated, GMP facility – a fundamental prerequisite for the production of biopharmaceuticals. In recognition of this achievement, one of this year’s Joseph von Fraunhofer prizes is being awarded to Prof. Dr. Andre Sharon from the Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation (partner institute of the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT) and Prof. Dr. Vidadi Yusibov from the Fraunhofer Center for Molecular Biotechnology (partner institute of the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME).

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