Title: “Plants as an alternative expression platform for pharmaceutical proteins”

Pharmaceutical proteins are being used increasingly for treatment and prevention of many diseases, from vaccines to immunotherapy. The cost of production of pharmaceutical proteins is generally much higher than that of chemical based treatments. Conventional expression systems, such as bacterial, yeast and mammalian cells are most commonly used for the production of biopharmaceuticals, however each of these systems has limitations when applied to the production of particular products. Alternative methods of production, which address the limitations of conventional systems, and reduce the cost of goods are actively being investigated. Plants offer several advantages as a protein expression system, particularly the cost of production, speed of development and scalability. Leaf Expression Systems has been spun out of JIC, to exploit the potential of plant expression for the production of proteins. We are currently developing several products which demonstrate the capabilities of this expression platform.