Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are widely used in medical therapy and
diagnostics, veterinary therapy, and research. The demand for mAbs
reaches several dozen tons per year and is constantly growing,
approaching the limits of current production possibilities. Mammalian
expression systems, which currently dominate the bioproduction industry,
have limited production capacity and require high capital investment and
production costs. Plants are becoming promising expression platforms due
to their scalability, speed, low cost of production, low risk of
contamination from animal pathogens and eukaryotic mechanisms of
post-translational protein modification. The transgenic plants used for
the production of mAbs can be obtained by stable transformation of plant
cells as well as transient expression of foreign proteins. In this
review, we extract a broad overview of articles, many of them from
recent years, concerning modern approaches to producing monoclonal
antibodies in plants, methods for modifying the carbohydrate profile of
mAbs, and purifying the resulting product. We also present current data
on the practical use of mAbs in medical therapies and potential methods
of producing antibodies on a very large scale, able to meet the future
market demand.
Mammalian expression of virus-like particles as a proof of principle for next generation polio vaccines
