What Does Plant-Based Vaccine Technology Offer to the Fight against COVID-19?

Abstract

The emergence of new pathogenic viral strains is a constant threat to global health, with the new coronavirus strain COVID-19 as the latest example. COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has quickly spread around the globe. This pandemic demands rapid development of drugs and vaccines. Plant-based vaccines are a technology with proven viability, which have led to promising results for candidates evaluated at the clinical level, meaning this technology could contribute towards the fight against COVID-19. Herein, a perspective in how plant-based vaccines can be developed against COVID-19 is presented. Injectable vaccines could be generated by using transient expression systems, which offer the highest protein yields and are already adopted at the industrial level to produce VLPs-vaccines and other biopharmaceuticals under GMPC-processes. Stably-transformed plants are another option, but this approach requires more time for the development of antigen-producing lines. Nonetheless, this approach offers the possibility of developing oral vaccines in which the plant cell could act as the antigen delivery agent. Therefore, this is the most attractive approach in terms of cost, easy delivery, and mucosal immunity induction. The development of multiepitope, rationally-designed vaccines is also discussed regarding the experience gained in expression of chimeric immunogenic proteins in plant systems.

COVID-19 Pandemic: an Overview of epidemiology, pathogenesis, Diagnostics and Potential Vaccines and Therapeutics

“…Medicago company has announced the development of a plant-based vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 release in March 2020. Besides, further attempts for vaccine development from Moderna utilizing mRNA platform, Inovios DNA vaccine and College of Medicine and University of Queensland's utilizing subunit recombinant expression of potential vaccines [56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63].…”

Quantum dots as a promising agent to combat COVID‐19

“…[6] Predominantly, the S protein (spike protein) plays a vital role in infecting cells by determining the host antibodies and neutralizing them. [7] Moreover, the S protein has a stronger affinity toward the human receptor ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) upon entering the host cells. [8] ACE2 is an enzyme attached to the cell membranes of the lower respiratory tract of lungs, stomach, small intestines, colon, kidney, lymph nodes, and liver bile ducts.…”

Natural Plant Products: A Less Focused Aspect for the COVID-19 Viral Outbreak

“…Given this disadvantage, most of the plant-based investigations directed towards COVID-19 either focus on bioinformatic tools such as in silico processing, molecular docking, or concentrate on molecular farming such as the production of recombinant proteins involving vaccines and antibodies (Islam et al, 2020;Rosales-Mendoza et al, 2020). Several molecules of known herbal medicines, when docked with the proteins of SARS-CoV-2, have been reported to inhibit 3CLpro, PLpro, spike proteins, and viral replication by binding in different domains (Islam et al, 2020).…”