• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.217-224
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• 2013

Transgenic plants have been tested as an alternative host for the production and delivery of experimental oral vaccines. Here, we developed transgenic potatoes that express the major antigenic sites A and D of the glycoprotein S from transmissible gastroenteritis coronavirus (TGEV-$S_{0.7}$) under three expression vector systems. The DNA integration and mRNA expression level of the TGEV-$S_{0.7}$ gene were confirmed in transgenic plants by PCR and northern blot analysis. Antigen protein expression in transgenic potato was determined by western blot analysis. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay results revealed that based on a dilution series of Escherichia coli-derived antigen, the transgenic line P-2 had TGEV-$S_{0.7}$ protein at levels that were 0.015% of total soluble proteins. We then examined the immunogenicity of potato-derived TGEV-$S_{0.7}$ antigen in mice. Compared with the wild-type potato treated group and synthetic antigen treated group, mice treated with the potato-derived antigen showed significantly higher levels of immunoglobulin (Ig) G and IgA responses.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.250-261
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• 2010

The expression of vaccine antigens in transgenic plants has the potential to provide a convenient, stable, safe approach for oral vaccination alternative to traditional parenteral vaccines. Over the past two decades, many different vaccine antigens expressed via the plant nuclear genome have elicited appropriate immunoglobulin responses and have conferred protection upon oral delivery. Up to date, efforts to produce antigen proteins in plants have focused on potato, tobacco, tomato, banana, and seed (maize, rice, soybean, etc). The choice of promoters affects transgene transcription, resulting in changes not only in concentration, but also in the stage tissue and cell specificity of its expression. Inclusion of mucosal adjuvants during immunization with the vaccine antigen has been an important step towards the success of plant-derived vaccines. In animal and Phase I clinical trials several plant-derived vaccine antigens have been found to be safe and induce sufficiently high immune response. Future areas of research should further characterize the induction of the mucosal immune response and appropriate dosage for delivery system of animal and human vaccines. This article reviews the current status of development in the area of the use of plant for the development of oral vaccines.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.151-161
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• 2004

Transgenic plants have been studied as delivery system for edible vaccine against various diseases. Edible plant vaccines have several potential advantages as follows: an inexpensive source of antigen, easy administration, reduced need for medical personnel, economical to mass produce and easy transport, heat-stable vaccine without refrigerator, generation of systemic and mucosal immunity and safe antigen without fetal animal-virus contaminants. The amount of recombinant antigens in transgenic plants ranged from 0.002 to 0.8％ in total soluble protein, depending on promoters for the expression of interested genes and plants to be used for transformation. Throughout the last decade, edible plant vaccine made notable progresses that protect from challenges against virus or bacteria. However edible plant vaccines have still problems that could be solved. First, the strong promoter or inducible promoter or strategy of protein targeting could be solved to improve the low expression of antigens in transgenic plants. Second, the transformation technique of target plant should be developed to be able to eat uncooked. Third, marker-free vector could be constructed to be more safety. In this review we describe advances of edible plant vaccines, focusing on the yields depending on plants/promoters employed and the results of animal/clinical trials, and consider further research for the development of a new plant-derived vaccine.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.356-362
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• 2014

Allergic diseases have increased rapidly over the past decades, affecting an estimated 20~30% of the population in developed countries. In this study, we investigated whether or not a typical costal sand dune plant Carex pumila (CPE) suppresses the activation of mast cells and IgE-mediated allergic response in vitro and in vivo. As the results, the extract of Carex pumila inhibited antigen-stimulated degranulation in RBL-2H3 cells and Bone marrow-derived mast cells (BMMCs), and IgE-mediated passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) in mice. CPE also suppressed the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, TNF-${\alpha}$ and IL-4, in antigen-stimulated mast cells. As its mechanism of action, CPE inhibited the activation of Syk in $Fc{\varepsilon}RI$-mediated signalling pathway, and that of LAT, a downstream adaptor molecule of Syk, in a dose-dependent manner. CPE also suppressed the activation of mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases, p38, ERK1/2, JNK, and Akt. Altogether, CPE inhibited mast cell activation and IgE-mediated allergic response by antigen through suppressing the activation of Syk. These results suggest that CPE may be useful for the treatment of allergic diseases.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.155-161
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• 2002

The HCV gene was expressed in potato plants under the control of the constitutive CaMV 355 promoter or tuber-specific patatin promoter. Solanum tuberosum plants carrying a plant expression vector harboring the encoding region of HCV gene were generated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated in vitro transformation methods. The presence of HCV gene in the plant genome was detected by PCR and DNA hybridization experiments. We obtained the 5 lines of transgenic potato with the pMBPHCV construct and 4 lines of transgenic potato with the pATHCV construct. The HCV transgenic stably integrated into the potato genome, as well as their transcription. HCV mRNA was identified in leaf and tuber tissues of transgenic plants by Northern blot analysis. The transgenic potato plants produced the expected transcript, and the corresponding HCV protein accumulated in individual transgenic plants.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.546-552
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• 2022

Epidermal cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) is a tumor-associated antigen (TAA), which has been considered as a cancer vaccine candidate. The EpCAM protein fused to the fragment crystallizable region of immunoglobulin G (IgG) tagged with KDEL endoplasmic reticulum (ER) retention signal (EpCAM-FcK) has been successfully expressed in transgenic tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum cv. Xanthi) and purified from the plant leaf. In this study, we investigated the ability of the plant-derived EpCAM-FcK (EpCAM-FcK^P) to elicit an immune response in vivo. The animal group injected with the EpCAM-FcK^P showed a higher differentiated germinal center (GC) B cell population (~9%) compared with the animal group injected with the recombinant rhEpCAM-Fc chimera (EpCAM-Fc^M). The animal group injected with EpCAM-FcK^P (~42%) had more differentiated T follicular helper cells (Tfh) than the animal group injected with EpCAM-Fc^M (~7%). This study demonstrated that the plant-derived EpCAM-FcK fusion antigenic protein induced a humoral immune response in mice.

• BMB Reports
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.229-233
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• 2020

The anti-colorectal cancer monoclonal antibody CO17-1A (mAb CO), which recognizes the tumor-associated antigen EpCAM, was expressed in transgenic Arabidopsis plants. PCR and western blot analyses showed the insertion and expression of heavy chain (HC)/HC fused to the KDEL ER retention modif (HCK) and light chain (LC) of mAb CO and mAb CO with HCK (mAb COK) in Arabidopsis transformants. Both plant-derived mAb^P CO and mAb^P COK were purified from a biomass of approximately 1,000 seedlings grown in a greenhouse. In sandwich ELISA, both mAb^P CO showed a slightly higher binding affinity for the target, EpCAM, compared to mAb^M CO. In cell ELISA, both mAbs^P COs showed binding affinity to the human colorectal cancer cell line SW480. Furthermore, mAb^M CO, mAb^P CO, and mAb^P COK exhibited dose and timedependent regression effects on SW480 cells in vitro. In summation, both mAb^P CO and mAb^P COK, expressed in Arabidopsis, recognized the target antigen EpCAM and showed anti-proliferative activity against human colorectal cancer cells.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.211-217
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• 2018

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are useful candidates for tissue engineering and cell therapy. Physiological cell environment not only connects cells to each other, but also connects cells to the extracellular matrix that provide mechanical support, thus exposing the entire cell surface and activating signaling pathways. Hydrogel is a polymeric material that swells in water and maintains a distinct 3-dimensional (3D) network structure by cross linking. In this study, we investigated the optimized cellular function for canine adipose tissue-derived MSCs (cAD-MSCs) using hydrogel. We observed that the expression levels of Ki67 and proliferating cell nuclear antigen, which are involved in cell proliferation and stemness, were increased in transwell-hydrogel (3D-TN) compared to the transwell-normal (TN). Also, transforming growth factor-${\beta}1$ and SOX9, which are typical bone morphogenesis-inducing factors, were increased in 3D-TN compared to the TN. Collagen type II alpha 1, which is a chondrocyte-specific marker, was increased in 3D-TN compared to the TN. Osteocalcin, which is a osteocyte-specific marker, was increased in 3D-TN compared to the TN. Collectively, preconditioning cAD-MSCs via 3D culture systems can enhance inherent secretory properties that may improve the potency and efficacy of MSCs-based therapies for bone regeneration process.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.233-241
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• 2005

Plants have considerable advantages for the production of antigenic proteins because they provide an inexpensive source of protein and an easy administration of vaccine. Since a publication describing edible plant vaccine of HBsAg in 1992, a number of laboratories around the world have studied the use of plants as the bioreactor to produce antigenic proteins of human or animal pathogens. Over the last ten years, these works have been mainly focused on three major strategies for the production of antigenic proteins in plants: stable genetic transformation of either the nuclear or plastid genome, or transient expression in plants using viral vectors. As many antigenic proteins have been expressed in tobacco, also several laboratories have succeeded to express genes encoding antigenic proteins in other crop plants: potato, tomato, maize, carrot, soybean and spinach. At present many works for the production of edible plant vaccine against bacteria-mediated diseases have mostly performed the studies of enterotoxins and adhesion proteins. Also the development of new-type antigens (pili, flagella, surface protein, other enterotoxin and exotoxin etc.) is required for various targets and more efficacy to immunize against microorganism pathogens. Many works mostly studied in experimental animals had good results, and phase I clinical trial of LTB clearly indicated its immunogenic ability. On the other hand, edible plant vaccines have still problems remained to be solved. In addition to the accumulation of sufficient antigen in plants, human health, environment and agriculture regulation should be proven. Also oral tolerance, the physiological response to food antigens and commensal flora is the induction of a state of specific immunological unresponsiveness, needs to be addressed before plant-derived vaccine becomes a therapeutic option.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.87-94
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• 2008

Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) is an infectious and highly contagious virus of swine. In order to develop the transgenic tobacco culture cells producing PEDV antigen protein, four vectors expressing PEDV spike protein (SP) gene under the control of a CaMV 35S promoter were constructed. Four fragments of the SP region of PEDV, SP1 (444 bp, 1487-1930 bp), SP2 (1.7 kb, 2300-3987 bp), SP3 (1.4 kb, 1559-2950 bp), and SP4 (2.6 kb, 9-2643 bp) were amplified by PCR and then C-MYC tag was fused to the end of each SP gene, respectively. These cassettes are inserted into the pCAMBIA2300 (named as 35S::SP1-M, 35S::SP2-M 35S::SP3-M, and 35S::SP4-M, respectively). Tobacco (cv. BY-2) cultured cells were transformed by co-cultivation with Agrobacterium tumefaciens harboring expression vector. We selected kanamycin-resistant calli and checked for the presence of the introduced SP gene using PCR, resulting 70% of them showed the foreign gene. We selected the lines with high-level expression of PEDV antigen protein based on dot blot analysis. Southern blot analysis confirmed that the PEDV SP gene was integrated into the genome of the tobacco cultured cells. Northern blot analysis showed that the introduced gene was highly expressed in transgenic cultured cells. Transgenic tobacco cultured cells-derived antigen induced immunogenicity in mice as determined by a plaque reduction neutralization assay. These results suggest that the vectors expressing PEDV spike protein gene in this study will be useful for the development of transgenic plants and cultured cells producing PEDV antigene protein.