Biopharming

The development of this video was funded under NIE Incentivsing ICT Use Innovation Grant to Asst. Prof. Chen Zhong (I3G 02/16 CZ).

Have you ever had to have a vaccination and spent days being anxious about the injection that is to come? What if I told you that in the near future, it is possible that vaccines could be eaten, so you can avoid that nasty injection?

[yanfanglow]

I'm not sure about the concept of edible vaccines if consuming antigens would help us develop antibodies against them. Since complex molecules that enter our digestive system are broken down into simpler substances before assimilated into our bloodstream. For example, peptides are easily denatured with pH and also broken down into amino acids by peptidase in our guts. Hence, I may not agree with the use of edible vaccines as a potential biopharming application. However, please let me know if I am wrong, I would love to update my concept.
Other than that, I agree that biopharming is the way to go about producing drugs due to the potential of producing harmful enantiomers through chemical synthesis.

[AMOGHA.BHATTA]

all the concept is great but when any protein is synthesized in larger scale like in factory, there are so much of microbs and microbes are highly mutatable right? thus how do you control their mutations??

[EtreTocsin]

I love this concept. But full disclosure and strict controls would have to be in place so as not to pollute standard food stuffs. It would still be, in essence, a medicine. And not all medicine is appropriate for all persons. Specialty grow houses/ labs would need to be the standard if this concept was to be put into production.