Exploiting Superinfection Exclusion To Express Polyclonal Antibodies In Plants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cell culture produced monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have advantages over polyclonal antibodies derived from human or animal sera, such as reproducibility of production and enhanced safety profile. Although targeting multiple epitopes on cancer cells, viruses or toxins with multiple mAbs in combination has demonstrated superior therapeutic effects compared to mAb monotherapy, oligoclonal mAb therapy is not widely practiced partially because of the cost of separately producing and characterizing multiple mAbs for use in combination. In this proposal we will test a novel idea for producing an oligoclonal mixture of mAbs using a plant expression system. Plant viruses exhibit a phenomenon called superinfection exclusion, whereby a preexisting viral infection prevents a secondary infection with the same or a closely related virus. We propose to express multiple mAbs in a single plant simultaneously, exploiting the superinfection exclusion characteristic of plant virus ex