Plant viral vectors have great potential for rapid production of important pharmaceutical proteins. High-yield production, however, of hetero-oligomeric proteins that require the expression and assembly of two or more protein subunits often is problematic due to the competing nature of viral vectors derived from the same virus. Researchers at the...

Noroviruses (also known as Norwalk viruses) are believed to cause approximately 90% of epidemic nonbacterial outbreaks of gastroenteritis worldwide and may be responsible for 50% of all foodborne outbreaks of gastroenteritis in the US. The CDC estimates that up to 200,000 children under the age of 5 die of norovirus infection in developing countries...

More than 170 million people worldwide are chronic carriers of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV), but there is no therapeutic vaccine currently available for treating this infection. Persistent HCV infection results in chronic active hepatitis which may lead to progressive liver disease. Current treatment strategies are expensive, have substantial side effects,...

Norovirus causes almost 90% of epidemic, non-bacterial outbreaks of gastroenteritis around the world. Extremely infectious and diverse, the virus causes acute diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, headache, fatigue, and fever. Though the illness is generally resolved within 48 hours, mortalities do occur in the young, elderly, and immune-compromised,...

Because of the obvious cost-effective advantages to producing mammalian proteins in plants, as opposed to conventional mammalian tissue culture, considerable efforts have been expended in the biotech arena to perfect this technology. One of the major challenges is the efficient transient expression of hetero-oligomeric proteins, which currently...

Most currently available vaccines consist of killed or live-attenuated pathogens delivered by injection. Despite their success in preventing disease, there are compelling conceptual technical and economical reasons to seek alternatives. Subunit vaccines that target the mucosal immune system are considered by many as such alternatives. For example...