Green Vaccine Research Spreads Around

Plants have been presented as a cost effective production system for immunotherapeutic proteins like vaccines. Dr Sandy Loh from School of Biosciences, who is the project leader of the plant-based vaccine group, had been invited to give talks in a few international conferences. Most recently, she had given a talk at The 2nd International Conference of Life Sciences (ICLS), Indonesia in July 2012 on the topic entitled: Biopharmaceuticals Production Using an Alternative Green Approach. Basically, the research is aimed at adopting the plant viral vectors and transplastomic transformation strategies to develop the candidate vaccines against two significant poultry viral diseases i.e. avian influenza (AI) strain H5N1 and highly virulent infectious bursal disease virus (hvIBDV). Both AI and IBDV cause substantial economic losses to the poultry industry worldwide as a result of high morbidity and mortality rates. By establishing a versatile platform, the expression of vaccinogens in the palatable parts of plants can lead to production of edible active vaccines. Dr Sandy Loh had commented that “The expression of vaccinogens within plants would be a prerequisite for sustainable edible vaccines capable of curbing the poultry viral infections at the primary host level”.