Plant molecular farming: production of metallic nanoparticles and therapeutic proteins using green factories 2019

Review Article published in:  Green Chemistry 2019, 21, 1845; DOI: 10.1039/c9gc00335e

Authors: Reza Mohammadinejad, Amin Shavandi, Diana S. Raie, Jeyabalan Sangeetha, Mohsen Soleimani, Shahram Shokrian Hajibehzad, Devarajan Thangadurai, Ravichandra Hospet, Jacob O. Popoola, Ahmad Arzani, Miguel A. Gómez-Lim, Siavash Iravani, Rajender S. Varma

What is it about?

Plants can provide an outstanding alternative for the production of phytomaterials and biomaterials, and this review highlights the exogenous and endogenous syntheses of nanoparticles using living plants. Additionally, the plant nano-molecular farming of proteins including collagen, gelatin, elastin, recombinant anti-cancer monoclonal antibodies and recombinant anti-cancer vaccines is discussed.

Why is it important?

Compared to the traditional methods of nanoparticle synthesis using toxic and hazardous materials, plant-based eco-friendly and greener nano-approaches for the assembly of nanoparticles (NPs) are showing major advantages. Plant extracts are renewable in nature and often are processed in an eco-friendly aqueous medium. Moreover, the reaction conditions used in production processes are mild. Additionally, plant extracts and phyto-nano-products are receiving consideration as they cost effective, non-hazardous, and energy efficient.

Perspectives

There are relatively fewer studies in the phyto-nanotechnology arena because of the complexity of plant systems and other reproducibility limitations. Phyto-nanotechnology has great potential in the production of different NPs by employing the extracts of different parts of plants such as leaves, seeds, flowers, and roots. Such synthesized biological nanomaterials have notable applications in medicine, mainly in the preparation of novel pharmaceuticals, imaging, drug delivery, diagnosis methods, and making effective nano-devices. Hence, greener production of NPs is the key building block for developing new therapies to control various epidemic diseases.

Fig. 1 Plants for molecular farming: advantages and biosafety issues.