Table of Contents
What is Edible Vaccine?
Edible vaccines offer cost effective, easily administrable, Storable and widely acceptable as bio friendly particular in developing countries.
Edible vaccines present exciting possibilities for significantly reducing various diseases such as measles, hepatitis B, cholera, diarrhea, etc., mainly in developing countries.
Oral administration of edible vaccines proves to be promising agents for reducing the incidence of various diseases like Hipetitis.
Especially in the developing world, which face the problem of storing and administering vaccines.
Edible vaccines (EV) are composed of antigenic proteins and devoid of pathogenic genes which are going to play a vital role and have great promise for the development of the vaccines as a means of prophylactic control of future disease or disorders including metabolic disorders.
Concept of Edible Vaccines
Developement of edible vaccines involves the process of incorporating the selected desired genes into plants and then enabling these altered plants to reduced the encoded proteins.
This process is known as transformation and the altered plants are known as transgenic plants.
Edible vaccines like traditional subunit vaccines consist of antigenic proteins and are devoid of pathogenic genes.
Development of Edible Vaccines
The selected gens obtained from the microbes encoding specific antigen can be handled in two different ways:
- Suitable plant virus is genetically engineered to produce the desired proteins.
- In another method the desirable gene is incorporated with plant vector by transformation.
Advantages of Edible Vaccines
- Edible vaccines have efficient mode of action for immunization, as they do not require subsidiary elements to stimulate immune response.
- Edible vaccines unlike traditional vaccines brings forth mucosal immunity.
- Edible vaccines are comparatively cost effective as they dot not require cold chain storage like traditional vaccines.
- Edible vaccines are widely accepted us they are orally administered unlike traditional vaccines that are injectable.
- Edible vaccines offer greater storage opportunities as they seeds of transgenic plants contain lesser moisture content and can easily dried.
Disadvantages of Edible Vaccines
- A subject may develop immune tolerance to a particular vaccine protein or peptide.
- The dosage required depends on the generation and plant, protein content, patient, age, weight, ripeness of fruit and amount of food consumed.
- Administration of edible vaccines requires a method of standardizing the plant material/product. This is because low doses produce fewer antibodies and high doses can cause immune tolerance.
- Edible vaccines depend on plant stability. Certain foods cannot be eaten raw (such as potatoes) and must be cooked, leading to denaturation or weakening of the proteins they contain.
- Edible vaccines are susceptible to microbial attack. Vaccinated potatoes last longer when stored at 4°C, but tomatoes do not.
- A proper distinction between ‘vaccination fruit’ and ‘normal fruit’ is necessary to avoid vaccine misdosing that can lead to vaccine resistance.
- Significant differences in plant and human glycosylation patterns may compromise the functionality of edible vaccines.