A consortium of Unigro, East Malling Research and Empharm has commenced trials to demonstrate economic production of high-value biomolecules using the GroDome, a sustainable containment system
The Unigro, East Malling Research and Empharm consortium was one of 168 successful applicants to win a grant from the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) under its National Competition for Innovation and Technology November 2004 programme, which had 967 competitors.
The consortium brings together UK plant science, bio-technology and customised engineering to demonstrate the production benefits and economic advantages of 'molecular pharming'.
The trial programme, which will run for three years, will initially be conducted in the East Malling Research GroDome, where stably transformed tobacco will be used to express monoclonal antibodies.
The second half of the programme will use data collected over the first eighteen months to scale up to a semi-commercial trial using a larger GroDome.
It is planned that once the programme demonstrates the significant economies of contained agronomy for producing plant-based pharmaceuticals, a full-scale production platform will be constructed for commercial use.
The consortium has formed Plant Vaccines Limited, which will exploit the technology within the biotechnology sector.
The group is interested in communicating with suitable partners from the industry.
