Capital Advantages ? Production of Therapeutic Proteins in Transgenic Plants
Capital Conservation
This well documented consideration far outweighs all other business reasons for using plants to manufacture large supplies of important human therapeutic proteins. Current estimates place transgenic plant protein production at only cents-on-the-dollar compared to mammalian cell culture bioreactors.
See a Feature Article by Alan Dove in Nature Biotechnology, Volume 20, pages 772-779, August 2002.
All Other Reasons
Most current capital intensive production facilities are based on mammalian cell culture. Some are based on bacteria or yeast cell growth. Bacteria and yeast bioreactors were intended to reduce capital outlay, but have not met expectations.
