Journal of Plant Pathology (2006) 88, p. S27 (Vitti et al.)

A. Vitti, M. Lapelosa, M. Nuzzaci and P. Piazzolla (2006)
Plant-derived vaccines
Journal of Plant Pathology 88 (3, Special Issue), S27-S27
S.I.Pa.V XIII National Meeting - Foggia, 12-16 September 2006 - Oral Presentation
Abstract: The production of plants expressing foreign antigens is a particularly promising approach to produce vaccines. Antigen (Ag) expression either in transgenic plants or in plants infected with genetically engineered chimeric viruses to display potentially immunogenic peptides on their outer surfaces offers several advantages. First of all, plants can be eaten, thus providing an easy and not expensive route of Ag administration. In such a way, plant viruses carrying on their coat protein peptides of medical interest can be considered, in association with their hosts, right partners of biological systems devoted to pursue the goal of functioning as medical molecular farming. Thus, plants may behave as heterologous expression vectors, but unlike the transgenic strategy, which necessarily needs the manipulation of plant genomes, the chimeric virus strategy requires the manipulation of virus genomes. So, the first strategy has a genetically modified organism as a final product, whereas the second strategy generates a genetically modified virus, which is an elementary biosystem possessing some of the properties of living organisms, such as having a genome and being able to adapt to changing environments. We have been able to use as a carrier Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), a tripartite genome isodiametric plant virus about 30 nm in diameter, with both a worldwide distribution and an extremely wide host range. The viral CP gene was successfully engineered to express peptides deriving from the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) envelope and the amyloid-beta protein (A-beta) of Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Research topic(s) for pests/diseases/weeds:
molecular biology - genes

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Pest and/or beneficial records:

Beneficial	Pest/Disease/Weed	Crop/Product	Country	Quarant.
	Cucumber mosaic virus