Molecular farming can be defined as the use of plants to produce recombinant protein products. The technology is now >30 years old. The early promise of molecular farming was based on three perceived advantages: the low costs of growing plants, the immense scalability of agricultural production, and the inherent safety of plants as hosts for the production of pharmaceuticals. This resulted in a glut of research publications in which diverse proteins were expressed in equally diverse plant-based systems, and numerous companies were founded hoping to commercialize the new technology. There was a moderate degree of success for companies producing non-pharmaceutical proteins, but in the pharmaceutical sector the anticipation raised by promising early research was soon met by the cold hard reality of industrial pragmatism. Plants did not have a track record of success in pharmaceutical protein manufacturing, lacked a regulatory framework, and did not perform as well as established industry platforms. Negative attitudes towards genetically modified plants added to the mix. By the early 2000s, major industry players started to lose interest and pharmaceutical molecular farming fell from a peak of expectation into a trough of disillusionment, just as predicted by the Gartner hype cycle. But many of the pioneers of molecular farming have refocused their activities and have worked to address the limitations that hampered the first generation of technologies. The field has now consolidated around a smaller number of better-characterized platforms and has started to develop standardized methods and best practices, mirroring the evolution of more mature industry sectors. Likewise, attention has turned from proof-of-principle studies to realistic techno-economic modeling to capture significant niche markets, replicating the success of the industrial molecular farming sector. Here we argue that these recent developments signify that pharmaceutical molecular farming is now climbing the slope of enlightenment and will soon emerge as a mature technology.

分子耕作可以定义为使用植物生产重组蛋白产品。该技术现在已有30多年的历史了。分子农业的早期希望基于三个公认的优势：种植植物的低成本，农业生产的巨大可扩展性以及植物作为药品生产宿主的固有安全性。这导致大量的研究出版物，其中在同样多样化的基于植物的系统中表达了多种蛋白质，并且成立了许多公司，希望将该新技术商业化。生产非医药蛋白的公司取得了一定程度的成功，但是在医药领域，工业实用主义的冷酷现实很快满足了有前途的早期研究提出的期望。植物没有在制药蛋白质生产方面取得成功的记录，缺乏​​监管框架，并且表现不如成熟的工业平台。对转基因植物的负面态度也增加了。就像Gartner炒作周期所预测的那样，到2000年代初期，主要的行业参与者开始失去兴趣，制药分子农业从期望的高峰跌落到了幻灭的低谷。但是，许多分子农业的先驱者已经重新关注他们的活动，并致力于解决阻碍第一代技术的局限性。现在，该领域已经整合了少数几个功能更好的平台，并开始开发标准化的方法和最佳实践，以反映出更成熟的行业领域的发展。同样，注意力从原理验证研究转向现实的技术经济模型，以占领重要的利基市场，从而复制工业分子农业领域的成功。在这里，我们认为，这些最新进展表明，药物分子耕种正朝着启蒙的方向发展，并将很快成为一种成熟的技术。