ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of the year 2020 the entire world has witnessed a very difficult outbreak, more than a century after the Spanish flu outbreak that shook the world in 1918. As it claims more and more lives worldwide every day, it is clear that no country was prepared for such a pandemic. Now that the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared it a global-pandemic, and when the entire world stands united to find an antidote to this common enemy, the major uphill task that exist is how to implement large-scale mass immunization across nations. Keeping in mind that the entire process could possibly burn a hole in the economies of many small and medium-sized countries, our study would like to suggest a novel and low-cost technique that could help the world fight pandemics like SARS-CoV-2 and others, exploring the immense potential that plant-based edible vaccines possess, as plants offer enormous breeding grounds for testing of these novel techniques. The stable integration of an antigen into the plant nuclear or chloroplast genome can successfully transform plants like potato, tomato, and banana into bioreactors for the production of subunit vaccines. A safe and effective oral delivery is provided through the consumption of edible plant tissue. Production costs are low since these vaccines clearly bypass the cold-chain storage of conventional vaccines. In addition, the need for medical personnel and sterile injection is reduced; hence this technique has several advantages, including a low carbon footprint, which could be explored for the sake of all humanity.
