iBio Inc (IBIO)

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“Sleeping Giant: Why iBio Uses Plant Based Therapeutics

One of the reasons why iBio uses a plant based protein model is because it has efficacy advantages over similar antibodies. iBio scientists engineer vectors for the desired protein sequence and transfer them to agrobacteria, which infiltrate mature plants and transfer the gene to the plant cell nuclei, which over the course of about five days churn out the therapeutic protein.

Downstream steps are similar to purification of proteins expressed in mammalian cells.

iBio employs transient transfection, meaning that the agrobacterium hijacks the plant’s protein without conferring permanent changes to the plant’s genetics—the plant cannot pass protein production capability on to offspring.

Thus, issues related to human consumption of genetically modified plants disappears, as does the potential for Frankenplant-type scenarios in which traits are transmitted willy-nilly to plants outside the production area. “FDA views the plants as a raw material,” says iBio CEO Robert Erwin.

iBio conducts its cGMP processes indoors for biopharmaceuticals, but applications are opening up for producing food or industrial proteins outdoors.

Like all genetic engineering, transient transfection requires getting genes into cells in some manner. Spraying the transfected agrobacterium onto plants works, but iBio has devised a much more efficient, and elegant technique. It submerges plants into a suspension of the bacterium, and applies a vacuum to remove gases lurking within the plant structure. Releasing the vacuum creates a positive relative pressure that forces agrobacterium into cells via interstitial openings.”

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