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. 2021 Feb 12;10(2):352.
doi: 10.3390/plants10020352.

COVID-19 Crisis: How Can Plant Biotechnology Help?

Md Jahidul Islam Shohag  1   2   3 , Farhana Zerin Khan  1 , Lin Tang  1 , Yanyan Wei  1   4 , Zhenli He  1   3 , Xiaoe Yang  1   3
Affiliations

COVID-19 Crisis: How Can Plant Biotechnology Help?

Md Jahidul Islam Shohag et al. Plants (Basel). .

Abstract

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant public health crisis all over the world. The rapid spreading nature and high mortality rate of COVID-19 places a huge pressure on scientists to develop effective diagnostics and therapeutics to control the pandemic. Some scientists working on plant biotechnology together with commercial enterprises for the emergency manufacturing of diagnostics and therapeutics have aimed to fulfill the rapid demand for SARS-CoV-2 protein antigen and antibody through a rapid, scalable technology known as transient/stable expression in plants. Plant biotechnology using transient/stable expression offers a rapid solution to address this crisis through the production of low-cost diagnostics, antiviral drugs, immunotherapy, and vaccines. Transient/stable expression technology for manufacturing plant-based biopharmaceuticals is already established at commercial scale. Here, current opinions regarding how plant biotechnology can help fight against COVID-19 through the production of low-cost diagnostics and therapeutics are discussed.

Keywords: COVID-19; biopharmaceuticals; diagnostics and therapeutics; plant biotechnology; transient expression.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Developmental routes for plant-based diagnostics and therapeutics to address the COVID-19 crisis. Blue arrows indicate transient expression; brown arrow indicates stable expression; olive green arrows indicate potential routes for diagnostics; and light green arrows indicate potential routes for therapeutics manufacturing platforms. SARS-CoV-2: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; VLPs: virus-like particles. Some of these images were generated using Biorender (https://biorender.com/).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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