Site-Specific Glycosylation of Recombinant Viral Glycoproteins Produced in

There is an urgent need to establish large scale biopharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in Africa where the infrastructure for biologics production is severely limited. Molecular farming, whereby pharmaceuticals are produced in plants, offers a cheaper alternative to mainstream expression platforms, and is amenable to rapid large-scale production. However, there are several differences along the plant protein secretory pathway compared to mammalian systems, which constrain the production of complex pharmaceuticals. Viral envelope glycoproteins are important targets for immunization, yet in some cases they accumulate poorly in plants and may not be properly processed. Whilst the co-expression of human chaperones and furin proteases has shown promise, it is presently unclear how plant-specific differences in glycosylation impact the production of these proteins. In many cases it may be necessary to reproduce features of their native glycosylation to produce immunologically relevant vaccines, given that glycosylation is central to the folding and immunogenicity of these antigens. Building on previous work, we transiently expressed model glycoproteins from HIV and Marburg virus in

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Copyright © 2021 Margolin, Allen, Verbeek, van Diepen, Ximba, Chapman, Meyers, Williamson, Crispin and Rybicki.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

EM, RC, AM, AL-W, and ER have filed patent applications describing the development of approaches to support production of glycoproteins in plants including US 2019/0337994 A1, WO 2018 220595 A1, PA174002_PCT, and PA2106659.4. The remaining author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.