A national project to build a business support facility for plant-derived vaccine

The facility will be located in Pohang Fusion Technology Industry Zone by investing 13.5 billion won from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Gyeongbuk Province and Pohang city from November 2018 to October 2021 including an enclosed plant and plant cell culture facility, a plant-derived vaccine production facility, an animal efficacy assessment facility (Fig. 2) and equipment to support bio-venture companies. Plant-derived vaccine is a recombinant protein (antigen) produced by introducing disease-causing gene to plant organism or plant cells, and it has been reported to be more safe, economical, and fast-paced compared to the existing vaccine production platforms such as egg white and/or mammalian cells [1, 2, 3]. According to a survey conducted by domestic plant biotech researchers in 2018, the level of industrialization lags behind that of advanced countries, though there is not much difference in the level of technologies for plant-derived pharmaceuticals. [...]the plant-derived vaccine business support facility that supports industrialization is highly meaningful in providing an opportunity to strategically foster the domestic plant-derived vaccine industry in the future.