ABSTRACT
The concept of therapeutic use of plants and botanicals is as old as early civilizations, and evolution of the medicines has occurred in parallel with the development of these civilizations. The advent of modern molecular biology, particularly the DNA recombinant technology, has provided new impetus to the pharmaceutical industry for the development of bio-pharmaceutical products from nature through investigation of leads from the traditional systems of medicine. “Molecular farming” is an application of this technology involving the use of plants and, in some cases, animals, as a means to procure compounds of high therapeutic value for the benefit of humanity. Plant organs represent an attractive alternative to cell cultures for the production of secondary plant products. Two types of organs are considered for this objective: hairy root cultures and shoot cultures. Transgenic plants may be considered as bioreactors for the molecular farming of recombinant therapeutics comprising vaccines and diagnostics such as recombinant antibodies, plasma proteins, cytokines, and growth factors.
