The idea of producing vaccines in plants originated in the late 1980s. Initially, it was contemplated that this notion could facilitate the concept of edible vaccines, making them more cost effective and easily accessible. Initial studies on edible vaccines focussed on the use of a variety of different transgenic plant host species for the production of vaccine antigens. However, adequate expression levels of antigens, the difficulties predicted with administration of consistent doses, and regulatory rules required for growth of transgenic plants gave way to the development of vaccine candidates that could be purified and administered parenterally. The field has subsequently advanced with improved expression techniques including a shift from using transgenic to transient expression of antigens, refinement of purification protocols, a deeper understanding of the biological processes and a wealth of evidence of immunogenicity and efficacy of plant-produced vaccine candidates, all contributing to the successful practice of what is now known as biopharming or plant molecular farming. The establishment of this technology has resulted in the development of many different types of vaccine candidates including subunit vaccines and various different types of nanoparticle vaccines targeting a wide variety of bacterial and viral diseases. This has brought further acceptance of plants as a suitable platform for vaccine production and in this review, we discuss the most recent advances in the production of vaccines in plants for human use.

用植物生产疫苗的想法起源于 20 世纪 80 年代末。最初，人们认为这一概念可以促进可食用疫苗的概念，使它们更具成本效益且更容易获得。关于可食用疫苗的初步研究集中于使用多种不同的转基因植物宿主物种来生产疫苗抗原。然而，抗原的足够表达水平、施用一致剂量的预测困难以及转基因植物生长所需的监管规则让位于可纯化和肠胃外施用的候选疫苗的开发。随后，该领域随着表达技术的改进而取得了进步，包括从使用转基因抗原到瞬时表达抗原的转变、纯化​​方案的完善、对生物过程的更深入了解以及植物生产的候选疫苗的免疫原性和功效的大量证据，所有这些为现在所谓的生物制药或植物分子农业的成功实践做出了贡献。这项技术的建立导致了许多不同类型的候选疫苗的开发，包括针对多种细菌和病毒疾病的亚单位疫苗和各种不同类型的纳米颗粒疫苗。这使得植物作为疫苗生产的合适平台得到了进一步的认可，在这篇综述中，我们讨论了人类使用植物生产疫苗的最新进展。