EDIBLE VACCINES

CONTENTS
Introduction
What is Edible Vaccines?
Preparation & How to make
an Edible Vaccine?
How Edible Vaccines provide
protection?
Advantages of Edible Vaccines
Disadvantages of Edible Vaccines
Risk in Edible Vaccines
Limitations of Edible Vaccines
Future perspective for Edible
Vaccines
Conclusion
References

INTRODUCTION

1.
2.

Vaccines have been revolutionary for the

prevention of infectious disease.
Edible Vaccines are subunit vaccines that
introduce selected genes into the plants
and facilitate the production of encoded
protein.
Main approaches for the production of
vaccines in plants:
Production of genetically modified plants.
To put the immunogenic genes into viruses
that infects the plant.

What is Edible Vaccines?

Charles

Arntzen (who was the first to use the

phrase edible vaccine), with Hugh Mason and
colleagues.
Edible vaccines are mucosal-targeted vaccines
that stimulate both the systematic and mucosal
immune responses.
Study species include potatoes, tomatoes,
bananas, lettuces, rice, wheat, soybean, corn
and legumes.
Fruits, vegetables and leafy salads can be
consumed raw or partially processed.

Why Banana?
Its a crop thats grown
throughout the developing
world, in sub-tropics and even
temperate areas in Asia,
India, Africa and America.
Its the food thats eaten
uncooked, whish is very
important so that the protein
we put in is not destroyed by
cooking.
Its eaten by infants and
children.
Its often the first food that
mother give to an infant.

Preparation
Step

1. Removing the vaccine

gene for insertion into a plasmid.

Step

2. Getting the plasmid

ready for insertion of the vaccine
gene.

Step

3. Recombination of the
gene and the plasmid.

Advantages of Edible
Vaccines
Protects against rare diseases such as dengue fever,

rabies, measles, cholera, foot, mouth disease and

hepatitis B,C, and E.
Easy for separation and purification of vaccines from
plant materials & heat stable.
Effective prevention of pathogenic contamination
from animal cells.
Good genetic stability & do not require cold chain
maintenance.
Since syringes and needles not are used, the
chances of infection are also less.
Production is very efficient and can be easily scaled.
Reduced need for medical personnel.
Economical to mass produce and transport.

Disadvantages of Edible
Vaccines
Plants

are living organisms that changes, so

the continuity of the vaccine production
might not be guaranteed.
If the vaccines were grown in fields or on
trees, security would become a big issue.
The dosage of the vaccines would be
variable.
The edible vaccines could be mistaken for
regular fruits and consumed in larger
amounts than might be safe.

Risks in Edible Vaccines

Risks

to the environment include gene

transfer and exposure to antigens or
selectable marker proteins.
Risks to human health include oral
tolerance,
allergenicity,
inconsistent
dosage, worker exposure and unintended
exposure to antigens or selectable marker
proteins in the food chain.
Risks are controllable through appropriate
regulatory measures at all stages of
production and distribution of a potential
plant-made vaccine.

Limitations of Edible Vaccines

Storage

of edible vaccines
Low yield
Consistency of dosage from plant to
plant, fruit to fruit and generation to
generation.
Using potatoes or bananas may
require some processing such as
smashing and liquoting.

Future perspectives for Edible

Vaccines
Must

meet standards of purity, potency,

safety and efficacy for vaccines by the
World Health Organization.
Although
still at an early stage of
development, the experimental results
strongly suggest that plant-derived edible
vaccines are likely to become a reality, in
the next few years.
In future a great ability for the immunization
throughout the glob with the use of edible
vaccine can be possible.

Conclusion
Edible vaccines hold great promise as a
cost-effective, easy to administer &
socioculturally readily acceptable vaccine
delivery system. Edible vaccines have
passed the major hurdles in the path of an
emerging vaccine technology. Leads to the
future of safer and more effective
immunization. Edible vaccines would
overcome
some
of
the
difficulties
associated with traditional vaccines.

References

Lal P., William H., langride R. (2000). Edible Vaccines , Scientific American , 66-71.

Tripurani S.K., Reddy N.S., Rao K. R. S. S. (2003). Green Revolution Vaccines, Edible
Vaccines, African Journal of Biotechnology , Vol. 2, 679-683.

Rathore M. S., Shekhawat N.S. (2007). Edible Vaccines: Go green with molecular
farming, Current Science, Vol. 92, 1324.

Jelaska S., Mihaljevic S., Bauer N. Production of Biopharmaceuticals, Antibodies and

Edible Vaccines in Transgenic plants, Current Status of Biotechnology , Vol. 4, 121-127.

Kirk D., Mcintosh K., Walmsley A., Peterson R. K. D. (2005).Risk analysis for plant-made
vaccines, Transgenic Research, Vol. 14, 449-462.

Daniell H., Streatfield S. J., Wycoff K.(2001). Medical molecular farming: production of
antibodies, biopharmaceuticals and edible vaccines in plants, Trends in Plant Science ,
Vol. 6, 219-226.

Garrity G. M., Harrison S. H. (2008). Edible Vaccines, Basic Biotechnology eJournal, Vol.
4, 104-109.

Ramchandran V. G., Goyal R., Sharma R.(2007). Edible Vaccines: Current status and
future, Indian Journal of Medical M icrobiology, Vol. 25, 93-102.