Hightech aus der grünen Apotheke. Biopharmazeutika aus Pflanzen

Hightech from Natures Pharmacy Plants produce a plethora of valuable natural products, many of which are used as pharmaceuticals. Today, a large fraction of the novel pharmaceuticals entering the market are biomolecules of proteinaceous nature (antibodies, hormones, cytokines, vaccines) and they are produced in transgenic organisms like bacteria, yeast, or mammalian cell cultures. Plants are also capable to serve as a production host for novel therapeutics like monoclonal antibodies, hormones like insulin, or subunit vaccines. Transgenic plants and plant cell cultures are already modified to produce protein biopharmaceuticals and vaccines on a large scale basis and in some aspects they have clear advantages over conventional production hosts (e.g. cost of goods, speed of production, or posttranslational modification of therapeutic proteins). Therefore, plant biotechnology could create entirely novel medicinal plants with applications not known before.