Protein Harvest

Genetic engineering is giving a new meaning to the term "manufacturing plant" as the biotechnology industry looks to potatoes, corn, tobacco, and other crops to provide cheap manufacturing sources for therapeutic The lack of capacity for the cost-effective manufacture of protein-based pharmaceuticals will soon cause a significant bottleneck at pharmaceutical companies, one that threatens to impede the progress of therapeutics at all stages of development, from the preclinical stage to commercialization. Today, companies are faced with the limited options of either queuing up for outsourced manufacturing, or investing hundreds of millions of dollars in their own production capacity well before they know that a product will succeed. A bumper crop of new companies is therefore poised to take advantage of the manufacturing capabilities of plants that have been genetically engineered to produce human proteins.