Low cost human therapeutic proteins bioencapsulated
within plant cells confer protection against inherited
or infectious diseases upon oral delivery
Dr. Henry Daniell, Chauncey Egel Endowed Professor, School of Dental
Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
ABSTRACT
Among 12 billion injections administered annually, unsafe delivery
leads to >20 million infections and >100 million reactions. In an
emerging new concept, freeze-dried plant cells (lettuce) expressing
vaccine antigens/biopharmaceuticals are protected in the stomach
from acids/enzymes but are released to the immune or blood
circulatory system when plant cell walls are digested by microbes that
colonize the gut. Lyophilized plant cells in capsules expressing protective antigens have been stored for
>15 months and shown to be stable at room temperature. Furthermore, lyophilization increases the
antigen concentration up to 25-fold and eliminates microbes in harvested leaf materials. In our lab, more
than twenty different vaccine antigens (against Dengue, polio, malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, anthrax,
plague, etc) or autoantigens (diabetes, hemophilia, etc) have been expressed in lettuce chloroplasts.
Vaccine antigens bioencapsulated in plant cells upon oral delivery after priming, conferred both mucosal
and systemic immunity and protection against bacterial, viral or protozoan pathogens or toxin challenge.
Oral delivery of autoantigens was effective against complications of type 1diabetes and hemophilia, by
developing tolerance. Oral delivery of exendin-4 expressed in plant cells regulated blood glucose levels in
mice similar to injections by stimulating insulin secretion and a 5,000 fold excess dose didn’t cause
hypoglycemia because insulinotropism of exendin-4 is glucose dependent. Therefore, this new platform
should offer a low cost alternative to deliver human therapeutic proteins to combat infectious or
inherited diseases by eliminating inactivated pathogens, expensive purification, cold
storage/transportation and sterile injections.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Henry Daniell is the Chauncey Egel Endowed Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, School of
Dental Medicine. He is the Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a
member of the Italian National Academy of Sciences, 14th American to be inducted in the past 230 years.
He is the Editor in Chief of the Plant Biotechnology Journal, Oxford, UK. He is recipient of the American
Diabetes Association Award, Bayer Hemophilia global award and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Award for his scientific contributions. He is recognized for pioneering chloroplast genetic engineering as a
new platform to produce and orally deliver low cost vaccines and biopharmaceuticals bioencapsulated in
plant cells. His invention was ranked by Nature Biotechnology among the top ten inventions of the past
decade and among Biomed Central’s Hot 100 authors in the world. He has more than forty patents
awarded globally and 150 published patents. His articles and patents have been cited in Google Scholar
over 11,000 times. His research is currently funded by several agencies including the NIH, USDA, DOE, Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bayer, American Diabetes Association and Juvenile Diabetes Research
Foundation. He has served as a consultant to the United Nations, several NIH or National Academy of
Science panels. His research has been featured often in the public press including Discovery Channel,
Voice of America, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, BBC, several other global networks, Paul Harvey, Jay Leno, New
York Times and Scientific American. For more details visit
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7sow4jwAAAAJ&hl=en