Leaders of the Texas Plant-Expressed Vaccine Consortium today announced a biotherapeutic manufacturing initiative designed to show proof of concept for a landmark new technology that could dramatically increase the nation's capability to produce vaccines for infectious diseases, including influenza.
Project GreenVax, which utilizes tobacco plants rather than the current egg-based vaccine technology, holds the promise of shortening vaccine production to a fraction of the current time, allowing rapid response to newly emerging viruses not possible with current technology. The majority of funding for the project is provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The Consortium, comprised of G-Con, LLC and The Texas A&M University System, designed Project GreenVax for a projected final scale capacity of 100 million doses per month. The flexibility of the plant-based system, combined with its low cost and ability to massively scale, may provide vaccine protection not only to citizens of the United States, but to many parts of the world that cannot currently afford vaccines.