Treating disease and administering vaccines to those in the poor communities and developing nations who need them the most if a challenge. The production of the vaccines is often expensive, and delivery requires a sterile syringe, and often even booster shots over time to ensure the vaccine is treatment is still effective.
This is costly, monetarily speaking, and can even cost human lives when those shots are delivered with a sterile needle, or are done improperly. 20 million cases of infection arise annually (Kwon et al, 2012).
While genetically modifying naturally occurring organisms for medicinal purposes is nothing new, some scientists started to mull over the idea of administering medications and life-saving vaccines around the globe in a different way. Biopharmaceuticals are on the rise, and their potential is incredible.
PLANT-BASED MEDICATIONS OF THE FUTURE 2
Though it the early stages of testing, development and regulating, delivery of vaccines and medicines orally via plants is proving to be a field worth paying attention to. The process is relatively low cost, with decently high yield, and distribution would be simple. Perhaps a utopian world where the locals can medicate themselves with the fruits from a banana is not possible just yet (Mandy, 2005), but it cannot be ruled out just yet. Biopharmaceuticals are merely in their infant stage, and will continue to improve as our science does.
History
While this field of biopharmaceuticals seems straight out of a futuristic movie plot, it is not exactly new. Biotechnology has been in place for decades, beginning with Alexander Flemming’s discovery of “mold juice”- penicillin- in 1928 (ACS, 1999). Flemming found that something as simple as this mold growth within a petri dish secreted a substance that could kill a variety of bacteria, ranging from diphtheria to streptococcus. Though it took some time before the penicillin could be properly purified and used to fight infection, the first major fungi based pharmaceutical had been manufactured (ACS, 1999), and an industry was born.
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