The ability to produce high levels of therapeutic proteins at low costs could result in improved health care for large numbers of individuals. NERP seeks to create a new biopharmaceutical protein production platform that will have significant advantages by lowering the costs of production and of purification for therapeutic proteins. NERP is considering two potential therapeutic protein targets for expression, interferon-b1a and erythropoietin. OBJECTIVES: NERP Technologies, Inc., a new biotech startup company seeks to obtain high-level Nectar Expression of Recombinant Proteins (NERP) in the nectar of ornamental tobacco plants. These plants normal express five nectarins (nectar proteins) at levels of 250 micrograms of protein/ml (= 1/4 g/L) in their nectar. The ability to produce new proteins in the nectar of these plants could result in a novel, high-level production system capable of producing gram quantities of therapeutic proteins. Yet, the most attractive aspect of this system is the limited complexity of plant nectar. Raw nectar contains only 5 proteins. The limited complexity of the proteins that accumulate in plant nectar will dramatically simplify downstream processing of therapeutic proteins following their expression. APPROACH: To demonstrate the applicability of this platform, we propose to prepare and analyze two DNA constructs. The first contains a peptide antigen fused to the major nectar protein and the second will contain GFP fused with the major nectar protein, NEC1. The experiments outlined in this proposal are designed to demonstrate the feasibility of expressing new proteins in the nectar of plants as a first step towards the development of this novel protein production platform
