Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

Plant made biologics have elicited much attention over recent years for their potential in assisting those in developing countries who have poor access to modern medicine. Additional applications such as the stockpiling of vaccines against pandemic infectious diseases or potential biological warfare agents are also under investigation. Plant virus expression vectors represent a technology that enables high levels of pharmaceutical proteins to be produced in a very short period of time. Recent advances in research and development have brought about the generation of superior virus expression systems which can be readily delivered to the host plant in a manner that is both efficient and cost effective. The following presentation describes recent innovations in plant virus expression systems and their uses for producing biologics from plants.

Biography

Kathleen L Hefferon received her PhD in Molecular Virology at the University of Toronto. She worked as a post-doc at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research and later as the Director of the Human Metabolic Research Unit in the Division of Nutritional Science at Cornell University. Most recently, she has written two books on agricultural biotechnology and is currently teaching Virology at the University of Toronto.