Kumar G B Sunil, Ganapathi T R, Bapat V A
Plant Cell Culture Technology Section, Nuclear Agriculture and Biotechnology Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Trombay, Mumbai 400 085, India.
Biotechnol Prog. 2007 May-Jun;23(3):532-9. doi: 10.1021/bp0602754. Epub 2007 Mar 10.
There is a growing interest to develop oral vaccines for infectious diseases, as it is the most convenient and effective way to attain mucosal immunity. Hepatitis B continues to be a major infectious disease in many developing countries despite the availability of recombinant vaccine. On a global scenario, Hepatitis B Virus infection is probably the single most prevalent cause of persistent viraemia in humans. There are about 350 million chronic carriers of HBV, which is about 5% of the total world population. It is estimated that 75-100 million of them will die of liver cirrhosis and/or hepatocellular carcinoma. Progress in plant genetic engineering has enabled the transfer of useful genes for desirable traits. The recent trend is to use this technique to exploit plants as biofactories for the production of therapeutic proteins including vaccines. Rapid progress has been made in this area to develop plant-based vaccines for hepatitis B. This review describes the expression, characterization, and immunogenicity studies of hepatitis B vaccines produced in recombinant plant systems and their implications for developing a plant-based vaccine.
开发用于传染病的口服疫苗正受到越来越多的关注，因为这是获得黏膜免疫最便捷有效的方式。尽管已有重组疫苗，但乙型肝炎在许多发展中国家仍是一种主要的传染病。在全球范围内，乙型肝炎病毒感染可能是人类持续性病毒血症的最主要单一病因。全球约有3.5亿慢性乙肝病毒携带者，约占世界总人口的5%。据估计，其中7500万至1亿人将死于肝硬化和/或肝细胞癌。植物基因工程的进展使得具有优良性状的有用基因得以转移。最近的趋势是利用这项技术将植物作为生物工厂来生产包括疫苗在内的治疗性蛋白质。在开发基于植物的乙型肝炎疫苗这一领域已取得迅速进展。本综述描述了重组植物系统中生产的乙型肝炎疫苗的表达、特性及免疫原性研究，以及它们对开发基于植物的疫苗的意义。
