Références sur les Plantes

Author Address: 1)Helmholtz Center, Germany 2)Julius Kühn Institute, JKI, Germany; 3)Institute of Environmental Biotechnology, Technical University, Austria; 4)Institute of Plant Nutrition, Hohenheim University, Germany; 5)Chair of Plant Breeding, Technical University, Germany; 6)Chair of Soil Ecology , Technical University, Germany XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Author: Scudellari Megan Year: 2010 Title: + Botanical Biopharming.

Journal: TheScientist Volume 24 | Issue 9 | Page 69 Date: 2010-09-01.

Label: Biopharming Review Abstract: Full text : 'Green-thumbed biotechs say they can use plants to make drugs faster, cheaper, and better than top pharmaceutical companies.'

In 2001, ProdiGene was a poster child for the plant biotechnology industry. A privately owned biotech in College Station, Texas, ProdiGene was the first to successfully commercialize a product made from a transgenic plant-a protein called trypsin produced in corn kernels and sold to the pharmaceutical industry for mammalian cell culturing. They also had more than 18 other plant-made products in development, including vaccines for traveler's diarrhea, hepatitis B, and AIDS. That spring, the MIT Technology Review voted ProdiGene's oral vaccine patent one of the "five patents that will transform business and technology."

But a year later, things began to spiral downhill. In September 2002, the US Department of Agriculture ordered ProdiGene to destroy 155 acres (63 hectares) of corn in Iowa that may have cross-pollinated with a nearby test site of ProdiGene's transgenic corn. Then in October, the USDA seized 500,000 bushels of soybeans contaminated by ProdiGene's corn in Nebraska. In the end, ProdiGene was slapped with over $2 million in fines and clean-up fees by the government. "That was the end of ProdiGene," says Zivko Nikolov, former vice president of bioprocessing at the company.

It wasn't the end for all plant biotechnology companies, however. Since the first human-like enzyme was produced from transgenic tobacco in 1992 at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, the biotech industry has seen a wave of companies try their hand at "biopharming"-plant-based pharmaceutical production. These companies challenge the status quo of biomanufacturing, purporting that plant-based technology has the potential to produce complex biomolecules cheaper, easier, and faster than traditional pharmaceutical facilities.

Rather than grow human or animal cells on expensive, nutrient-rich media, for example, biopharming derives its manufacturing energy from the sun. Genes can be inserted into the cells of plants such as corn, tobacco, and alfalfa, and the plant does the hard work transcribing and folding the protein, using only the Earth's abundant raw materials-water, carbon dioxide, and soil. Plants can also be grown in large fields, offering a much greater volume of product than a constricted, multimillion dollar manufacturing plant.

But with major obstacles remaining-such as the introduction of the first plant-made human pharmaceutical product to the market-the handful of plant biotechs in existence today remain a bit uneasy. "Until we actually get one of these over the goal line, you can never say you are out of troubled waters," says Joseph Boothe, VP of research and development at SemBioSys, a plant biotech based in Canada.

Still, these companies are convinced the model is a good one, and having learned from the failures of the 60 or so plant biotechs that have flourished, then floundered, they are working hard to push their products to the market. With new, alternative crops and techniques, and the first product on the cusp of FDA approval, it may be the beginning of a new era for plant biotech. "There are no major bottlenecks now. We have to just go and do it," says Nikolov. "This is just about the time we're going to see the first successes from plant biotech."

Under the sun The early, great hope of plant biotechnology was that transgenic corn and soybeans could be used to grow inexpensive biopharmaceuticals in vast quantities over thousands of acres. The crops had already been engineered for other purposes, such as pest and herbicide resistance, so the genetics of each plant were well known. Yet as ProdiGene‘s early tribulations demonstrated, one of the biggest risks of field growing is the contamination of nearby food crops. But with virtually unlimited space and free energy, a few companies hold out hope to grow under the sun. ―Growing on an agricultural scale, we can get high-capacity production and low-cost economics because we‘re able to harness natural solar power to grow the material,‖ says Boothe.