Biopharming: Growing Medicine Crops

Biopharming: Growing Medicine Crops
In biopharming, an emerging area of the biotechnology industry, plants are genetically modified to produce pharmaceuticals, also called plant-made pharmaceuticals (PMPs).

Typically, biologics such as antibodies and enzymes are manufactured using expensive mammalian cell cultures in bioreactor facilities. Today, there are four drug products (requiring human antibodies) that use an estimated 75% of the mammalian cell fermentation capacity. As new therapies are dis…