A Scientist at the African Union Development (AUDA-NEPAD), Prof. Olalekan Akinbo, has urged the Nigerian government and start-up companies to take advantage of molecular farming to develop vaccines.
Akinbo who said this in a telephone interview said that the move would generate revenue and create employment.
“Molecular farming can be used for production of subunit vaccines,” he said.
According to the scientist, molecular farming helps in the production of proteins or other metabolites valuable to medicine or industry in plants used in an agricultural setting.
He said that the call became necessary as Nigeria joined the rest of the world in developing vaccines against the deadly coronavirus in 2021.
“Consequently, the Nigerian Vaccine Policy (NVP) was established for the first time to promote domestic vaccine manufacturing and guarantee autonomy in vaccine accessibility.
“A possible area of research that ought to be looked into is the use of plants in the production of effective vaccines against both communicable and non-communicable diseases.
“This is because the government supports and funds vaccine research and development as part of the implementation strategies to achieve the aims and objectives of the NVP,” he said.
Akinbo, who is the Technical Lead, of the Genome Editing Initiative of the AUDA-NEPAD Centre of Excellence in Science, Technology and Innovation, expressed optimism that plants can be used to produce effective vaccines.
He said that plants have been used for over three decades as a bio-factory to manufacture pharmaceutically important recombinant proteins and diagnostic reagents through molecular farming.
The expert added that the utilisation of plants as subunit vaccines was gaining prominence as a quicker and safer alternative to conventional vaccine development.
Akinbo explained that there were established platforms such as microbes among others, used in the industrial manufacturing of biologics before the advent of molecular farming.
“Plant is yet to displace these major platforms because investment in the industry and existing framework favours these earlier establishment platforms.
“However, since Nigeria is developing capacity in this area, the government can take advantage of plants as the platform for the manufacturing of important biologics,” Akinbo said.
NAN
