Low-Cost Production of Engineered Proteins in Transgenic Plants

Plants provide an attractive platform for the production of recombinant proteins because they require significantly less capital investment than microbial fermentation systems and can be easily scaled up to produce additional protein. Edenspace proposes to develop a versatile plant expression system with tobacco to produce and purify proteins with therapeutic and industrial purposes. The gene expression cassette to be developed will include a molecular tag to simplify purification of the recombinant protein before being cleaved in order to preserve the biological activity of the protein. To demonstrate this system, Edenspace has created transgenic tobacco with its research partner at Michigan State University, Dr. Mariam Sticklen, expressing the human secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor (SLPI) protein. SLPI is well known for its anti-microbial, wound healing and anti-inflammatory activities, and through this project Edenspace will demonstrate the effectiveness of producing active SLPI in tobacco.