Transient expression of virus-like particles in plants: a promising platform for rapid vaccine production

Transient expression is an efficient and fast system to express recombinant proteins which has been used in different eukaryotic hosts such as mammalian and plant cells. Several applications of this system have so far been used which expression of proteins of interest is one of them. Recently, plants have attracted attention for being used as hosts for the production of recombinant pharmaceutical proteins such as antibodies and vaccines due to their lower price of production, compared to the mammalian systems. Many studies have conducted on the rapid production of vaccine candidate proteins either as a monomer or virus-like particles during epidemics of fast-spreading diseases such as influenza. Viruslike particles have been expressed in prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems are demonstrated to be one of the best antigen presenting systems which can carry antigens in a safe repetitive format on a particle to induce immunity. Here, we present recent advances in applying transient expression in plants that can be used to produce naked or enveloped virus-like particles as vaccine candidate as well some clinical trial studies.