2. Definition
• Molecular pharming is to design and engineer proteins which exploit the plants
manufacturing abilities
• Pharming or pharmin is the use of genetic engineering to insert genes that code
foruseful pharmaceuticals into host animals or plants that would otherwise not
express those genes thus creating a genetically modified organism
• Production of proteins or other metabolites valuable to medicine or industry in
plants traditionally used in agricultural setting
• It is also known as nolecular farming,molecular pharming or biopharming
3. Examples
• Potatoes
• Tobacco
• Production of hirudin from Brassica napus seeds
• Production of antibodies in transgenic plants
4. Products of pharming
• Recombinant proteins or their metabolic products
• Parental therapeutics
• Phamaceutical intermediates
• Industrial proteins
• Monoclonal antibodies
• Antigens for edible vaccines
• Enzymes
• Growth factors
5. Advantages of molecular pharming
• Gene containment as barley is self pollinating
• No risk of mammalian pathogens in the product
• Environmentally sustainable
• Achievement of recommended isolation distances for many crops
• Ability to obtain high yield
• Cheaper
• Less production costs
• Stability-storage by freezing or drying leaves
• Easily producible in consumabke form
6. Disadvantages
• Food or feed crops may become infested with pharmaceutical products
• Products may have negative effects on natural ecosystems
• Vaccine production might not be guaranteed
• Edible vaccines could be mistaken for regular fruits and consumed in larger
amounts than might be safe
• Dosage of the vaccines might be variable for example different sized bananas will
contain different amounts of vaccine
• If vaccines were grown in fields or on trees security would become a huge issue
7. Importance
• To provide an inexpensive means for the mass production of recombinant
pharmaceutical proteins
• To produce pharmaceutical substances for use in humans or animals
9. Methods
• Stable nuclear transformation of a crop species that will be grown in the
field or a greenhouse
• Stable plastid transformation of a crop species
• Transient transformation of a crop species
• Stable transformation of a plant species
