The global market for collagen, including the rising demand for vegan and plant-based alternatives, has grown significantly in recent years. In response, some biotechnology entrepreneurs and researchers are utilizing advancements in heterologous protein expression technologies to produce recombinant human collagen on a commercial scale.
In Canada, PlantForm Corporation is addressing this increasing demand by applying synthetic biology to cultivate bioidentical human collagen at an industrial level. They use N. benthamiana plants that are infiltrated with a recombinant agrobacterium solution containing the genetic sequence of collagen to produce collagen.
For over 50 years, collagen has been used in medicine for wound healing, cartilage repair, grafts, tissue scaffolds, and more. Traditionally sourced from animals or human cadavers, medical collagen carries risks of allergic reactions, contamination, pathogen transmission and variability due to purification challenges.
“By using plants as biofactories to produce the target proteins,” says Don Stewart, PlantForm’s president and chief executive officer (CEO), “we can provide a low-cost and highly scalable source of collagen that matches the mechanical properties and functionality of natural human collagen while eliminating concerns about immunogenicity and disease transmission that come from animal sources of collagen.”
Plant-based protein-production systems offer several advantages over methods that use microbes or mammalian cells and require large bioreactor/fermentation vessels and specialized growth media. Plant-based systems are far simpler and more easily scalable without requiring the complex and expensive equipment and multiple steps of cell-culture operations.
Bron: www.bioprocessintl.com