Pharmaceuticals coming from plants and animals It is very interesting to know that some of the vaccines we use and medications we take are from plants and animals. That has been the practice for generations. The question is, what is happening now? Especially where the plants are termed as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and animals being treated with antibiotics. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there is a new possibility of the production of vaccine antigens in genetically modified plants which can then be extracted and purified by conventional methods. All this is done in the lab. Generally, there are three classical types of vaccine production methods: the egg-based vaccines, cell-based vaccines and directly from the source, e.g. a plant or an animal. The most common example of eggbased vaccine is the influenza vaccine produced in 9-to-12-day-old embryonated eggs. This conventional method has been applied for over 60 years and it involves the injection of virus particles into the eggs and further incubation for several days to allow the replication of virus particles. In order to produce a vaccine, the antigen isolated from the purification process of the eggs containing vaccine virus would undergo additional procedures.
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