Pharming, a portmanteau of farming and pharmaceutical, refers to the use of genetic engineering to insert genes that code for useful pharmaceuticals into host animals or plants that would otherwise not express those genes, thus creating a genetically modified organism (GMO). Pharming is also known as molecular farming, molecular pharming, or biopharming.
The products of pharming are recombinant proteins or their metabolic products. Recombinant proteins are most commonly produced using bacteria or yeast in a bioreactor, but pharming offers the advantage to the producer that it does not require expensive infrastructure, and production capacity can be quickly scaled to meet demand, at greatly reduced cost.
History
The first recombinant plant-derived protein (PDP) was human serum albumin, initially produced in 1990 in transgenic tobacco and potato plants. Open field growing trials of these crops began in the United States in 1992 and have taken place every year since. While the United States Department of Agriculture has approved planting of pharma crops in every state, most testing has taken place in Hawaii, Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
In the early 2000s, the pharming industry was robust. Proof of concept has been established for the production of many therapeutic proteins, including antibodies, blood products, cytokines, growth factors, hormones, recombinant enzymes and human and veterinary vaccines. By 2003 several PDP products for the treatment of human diseases were under development by nearly 200 biotech companies, including recombinant gastric lipase for the treatment of cystic fibrosis, and antibodies for the prevention of dental caries and the treatment of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
However, in late 2002, just as ProdiGene was ramping up production of trypsin for commercial launch it was discovered that volunteer plants (left over from the prior harvest) of one of their GM corn products were harvested with the conventional soybean crop later planted in that field.News of contamination ProdiGene was fined $250,000 and ordered by the USDA to pay over $3 million in cleanup costs. This raised a furor and set the pharming field back, dramatically. Many companies went bankrupt as companies faced difficulties getting permits for field trials and investors fled. In reaction, APHIS introduced more strict regulations for pharming field trials in the US in 2003.Biotechnology Regulatory Services Factsheet [Internet]: US Department of Agriculture; c2006. Available from: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/biotechnology/content/printable_version/BRS_FS_pharmaceutical_02-06.pdf In 2005, Anheuser-Busch threatened to boycott rice grown in Missouri because of plans by Ventria Bioscience to grow pharm rice in the state. A compromise was reached, but Ventria withdrew its permit to plant in Missouri due to unrelated circumstances.
The industry has slowly recovered, by focusing on pharming in simple plants grown in bioreactors and on growing GM crops in greenhouses. Some companies and academic groups have continued with open-field trials of GM crops that produce drugs. In 2006 Dow AgroSciences received USDA approval to market a vaccine for poultry against Newcastle disease, produced in plant cell culture – the first plant-produced vaccine approved in the U.S.FDA Approval News
In mammals
Historical development Milk is presently the most mature system to produce recombinant proteins from transgenic organisms. Blood, egg white, seminal plasma, and urine are other theoretically possible systems, but all have drawbacks. Blood, for instance, as of 2012 cannot store high levels of stable recombinant proteins, and biologically active proteins in blood may alter the health of the animals. Expression in the milk of a mammal, such as a cow, sheep, or goat, is a common application, as milk production is plentiful and purification from milk is relatively easy. Hamsters and rabbits have also been used in preliminary studies because of their faster breeding.
One approach to this technology is the creation of a transgenic mammal that can produce the biopharmaceutical in its milk (or blood or urine). Once an animal is produced, typically using the pronuclear microinjection method, it becomes efficacious to use cloning technology to create additional offspring that carry the favorable modified genome. In February 2009 the US FDA granted marketing approval for the first drug to be produced in genetically modified livestock.Staff (2008) FDA Approves First Human Biologic Produced by GE Animals US Food and Drug Administration, from the FDA Veterinarian Newsletter 2008 Volume XXIII, No VI, Retrieved 10 December 2012 The drug is called ATryn, which is antithrombin protein purified from the milk of genetically modified goats. Marketing permission was granted by the European Medicines Agency in August 2006.
Patentability issues As indicated above, some mammals typically used for food production (such as goats, sheep, pigs, and cows) have been modified to produce non-food products, a practice sometimes called pharming. Use of genetically modified goats has been approved by the FDA and EMA to produce ATryn, i.e. recombinant antithrombin, an anticoagulant protein drug.Andre Pollack for The New York Times. February 6, 2009 F.D.A. Approves Drug From Gene-Altered Goats These products "produced by turning animals into drug-manufacturing 'machines' by genetically modifying them" are sometimes termed biopharmaceuticals.
The patentability of such biopharmaceuticals and their process of manufacture is uncertain. Probably, the biopharmaceuticals themselves so made are unpatentable, assuming that they are chemically identical to the preexisting drugs that they imitate. Several 19th-century United States Supreme Court decisions hold that a previously known natural product manufactured by artificial means cannot be patented.Richard H. Stern. Mayo v Prometheus: No Patents on Conventional Implementations of Natural Principles and Fundamental Truths , Eur. Intell. Prop. Rev. 502, 517. See Cochrane v. Badische Anili11 & Soda Fabrik, 111 U.S. 293, 311 (1884) (holding invalid claim to artificially made plant dye; "the product itself could not be patented, even though it was a product made artificially for the first time"); American Wood-Paper Co. v. Fibre Disintegrating Co., 90 U.S. 566, 596 (1874) (holding invalid claim to artificially manufactured paper-pulp because "whatever may be said of their process for obtaining it, the product was in no sense new"). An argument can be made for the patentability of the process for manufacturing a biopharmaceutical, however, because genetically modifying animals so that they will produce the drug is dissimilar to previous methods of manufacture; moreover, one Supreme Court decision seems to hold open that possibility.The American Wood-Paper case invalidated the product patent but left open the patentability of the process, saying "whatever may be said of their process for obtaining it...." 90 U.S. at 596.
On the other hand, it has been suggested that the recent Supreme Court decision in Mayo v. PrometheusMayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. __, 132 S. Ct. 1289 (2012). may create a problem in that, in accordance with the ruling in that case, "it may be said that such and such genes manufacture this protein in the same way they always did in a mammal, they produce the same product, and the genetic modification technology used is conventional, so that the steps of the process 'add nothing to the laws of nature that is not already present.Richard H. Stern. Mayo v Prometheus: No Patents on Conventional Implementations of Natural Principles and Fundamental Truths , Eur. Intell. Prop. Rev. 502, 517-18 (quoting Mayo v. Prometheus; see also Alice v. CLS Bank, 573 U.S. __, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014) (to similar effect). If the argument prevailed in court, the process would also be ineligible for patent protection. This issue has not yet been decided in the courts.
In plants Plant-made pharmaceuticals (PMPs), also referred to as pharming, is a sub-sector of the biotechnology industry that involves the process of genetically engineering plants so that they can produce certain types of therapeutically important proteins and associated molecules such as peptides and secondary metabolites. The proteins and molecules can then be harvested and used to produce pharmaceuticals.
Arabidopsis is often used as a model organism to study gene expression in plants, while actual production may be carried out in maize, rice, potatoes, tobacco, flax or safflower. Tobacco has been a highly popular choice of organism for the expression of transgenes, as it is easily transformed, produces abundant tissues, and survives well in vitro and in greenhouses. The advantage of rice and flax is that they are self-pollinating, and thus gene flow issues (see below) are avoided. However, human error could still result in modified crops entering the food supply. Using a minor crop such as safflower or tobacco avoids the greater political pressures and risk to the food supply involved with using staple crops such as beans or rice. Expression of proteins in plant cell or hairy root cultures also minimizes risk of gene transfer, but at a higher cost of production. Sterile hybrids may also be used for the bioconfinement of transgenic plants, although stable lines cannot be established. Grain crops are sometimes chosen for pharming because protein products targeted to the endosperm of cereals have been shown to have high heat stability. This characteristic makes them an appealing target for the production of edible vaccines, as viral coat proteins stored in grains do not require cold storage the way many vaccines currently do. Maintaining a temperature controlled supply chain of vaccines is often difficult when delivering vaccines to developing countries.
Most commonly, plant transformation is carried out using Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The protein of interest is often expressed under the control of the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter (CaMV35S), a powerful constitutive promoter for driving expression in plants. Localization signals may be attached to the protein of interest to cause accumulation to occur in a specific sub-cellular location, such as chloroplasts or vacuoles. This is done in order to improve yields, simplify purification, or so that the protein folds properly. Recently, the inclusion of antisense genes in expression cassettes has been shown to have potential for improving the plant pharming process. Researchers in Japan transformed rice with an antisense SPK gene, which disrupts starch accumulation in rice seeds, so that products would accumulate in a watery sap that is easier to purify.
Recently, several non-crop plants such as the duckweed Lemna minor or the moss Physcomitrella patens have shown to be useful for the production of biopharmaceuticals. These frugal organisms can be cultivated in bioreactors (as opposed to being grown in fields), secrete the transformed proteins into the growth medium and, thus, substantially reduce the burden of protein purification in preparing recombinant proteins for medical use. In addition, both species can be engineered to cause secretion of proteins with human patterns of glycosylation, an improvement over conventional plant gene-expression systems. Biolex Therapeutics developed a duckweed-based expression platform; it sold the business to Synthon and declared bankruptcy in 2012.
Additionally, an Israeli company, Protalix, has developed a method to produce therapeutics in cultured transgenic carrot or tobacco cells.Protalix website – technology platform Protalix and its partner, Pfizer, received FDA approval to market its drug, taliglucerase alfa (Elelyso), as a treatment for Gaucher's disease, in 2012.Gali Weinreb and Koby Yeshayahou for Globes May 2, 2012. FDA approves Protalix Gaucher treatment
Regulation