Application of plant viruses as vectors for the production of edible vaccines in plants

Infectious diseases account for more than 45% of total deaths in developing countries. Vaccination is the most effective means to prevent infectious diseases but current vaccine production methods are complex and expensive in technology. Such conditions make it impossible for a large part of the developing and poor countries to have access to vaccination. New strategies for producing vaccine subunits include the use of different systems, such as fermentation, bacteria and mammalian cells. But these systems have limitations, including development costs, Transportation and cooling systems, making them impractical. For this purpose, plant - derived vaccines are considered as a new perspective on the production of vaccines. In this method, small fragments of DNA encoding the epitope or antigen to be linked to the coat protein gene of the plant viruses. Then the recombinant virus is used to infect the plants. In this way, a wide range of plants have been used to produce vaccines against diseases. In this article, we describe the methods of producing oral vaccine using transgenic plants and the advantages and disadvantages of this technology.