Abstract

Plant bioreactor, also called molecular farming, has enormous potential to produce recombinant proteins infinitely. Products expressed in plants have natural physico-chemical properties and bioactivities. Plant bioreactor could be a safe, economic and convenient production system, and can been widely applied in industries and agricultures, especially in the life science and pharmaceutical industry. The applica-tion of transgenic plant in the production of vaccines, antibodies and pharmaceutical proteins has become a hot point in the plant genetic engineering in recent years. However, there are some limiting factors of application such as yield, downstream processing and so on. Here we review and discuss the advantages and research progress for the pharmaceutical plant bioreactors in recent three years, focusing on the existing problems and new strategies in this area.

Key words: Plant bioreactor, pharmaceutical proteins.