Edible Vaccines

Retrieved from: Vaccine

Retrieved from: Intechopen

Vaccines have become a method of primary disease prevention in healthcare and can be categorized by method of administration and production. Researchers have been striving to find more cost efficient and patient appealing ways to provide immunotherapy. Oral administration is considered easier than injection, especially with younger patients (Kim and Yang, 2010). The need for simple administration and cheaper production was the basis for establishing the Children’s Vaccine Initiative in 1990 (Arntzen, 1997). One benefit to oral vaccination is the absence of pain. This is appealing for younger patients and could increase child vaccination rates because the fear of pain is gone (Arntzen, 1997). The use of transgenic plants as a vector for oral vaccines has significant advantages over their injection counterpart such as lower production cost, absence of genes that may cause pathogenesis, elimination of needles, and do not require refrigeration to maintain viability (Guan et al., 2013). In 2000, it was estimated that the production cost for vaccinations using transgenic plants could be 10 to 50-fold lower than through traditional bacterial fermentation (Giddings et al., 2000). There are two transformation approaches. One is nuclear transformation, which uses Agrobacterium, and the other is transient expression, which uses a plant virus (Kim and Yang, 2010; Giddings et al., 2000). Producing transgenic plants using Agrobacterium tumefaciens introduces its DNA into the plant cells by using the recombinant plasmid vector to insert its genes into the genome of the host plant.  The other method is to infect the plant with a recombinant virus expressing the desired transgene which will be incorporated into the host’s DNA during replication (Kim and Yang, 2010; Giddings et al., 2000). The significance of this is that as the vaccine passes through GI tract, it comes into contact with the gut associated lymphoid tissues (GALT) stimulating immunoglobulin A production imitating a natural infection, and providing mucosal as well as systemic immunity. This cannot be accomplished through vaccine injection.  The antigen is protected from the stomach by the plant cell wall. In the intestine, it is broken down further releasing the antigen into the body. The antigen then stimulates an immune response (Sharma and Sood, 2011). Therefore, transgenic plants may provide an alternative form of immunotherapy by providing vaccinations through oral consumption, thus lowering the production cost of vaccinations and making them more readily available.

Retrieved from: Organic Gardening

References:

Arntzen, C. J. (1997). Edible vaccines. Public Health Reports, 112, 190-197. 

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Giddings, G., Gordon, A., Brooks, D., et al. (2000). Transgenic plants as factories for

biopharmaceuticals. Nature Biotechnology, 18(11), 1151-5. doi:10.1038/81132

Guan, Z., Guo, B., Huo, Y., et al. (2013). Recent advances and safety issues of transgenic plant-

derived vaccines. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, 97(7), 2817-40. doi:10.1007/s00253-012-4566-2

Kim, T., & Yang, M. (2010). Current trends in edible vaccine development using transgenic

plants. Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering: BBE, 15(1), 61-65. doi:10.1007/s12257-009-3084-2

Sharma, M., & Sood, B. (2011). A banana or a syringe: Journey to edible vaccines. World

Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology, 27(3), 471-477. doi:10.1007/s11274-010-0481-9