Chloroplast Genetic Engineering to Produce Diagnostic Antigens and Vaccines

Plant chloroplasts are capable of producing significant quantities of high quality bioengineered proteins with biomedical applications. Improving the commercial supply of diagnostic antigens and vaccines through use of our pliable expression platform will provide an important technological advance compared with the current mammalian and microbial cell culture platforms. Our innovative approach combines a next-generation plant platform, for rapid line production, with established downstream processing, and a novel technology that permits site-directed insertion of one or more transgenes in chloroplasts. This platform advance has the potential for significant production of antigens, such as for the hantavirus, in contained, biosecure facilities under conditions of Good Manufacturing Practice. Production of hantaviral proteins using the technical enabling strategies developed in Phase I for our target platform is anticipated to meet the proposed Phase II goal of applying the technology collaboratively to produce sufficient quality antigens for diagnostic and immunogenicity assays.