Commercial production of insulin and insulin-like proteins in plants
AssigneeProdiGene, Inc.
InventorsStephen Streatfield, John Howard
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Plants are engineered to express proinsulin or insulin. The plants can be used as a source of the protein for a variety of purposes. Plant tissue can be orally administered to animals to replace the necessity of injection of insulin. Alternatively, the protein can be extracted from plant tissue and delivered to animals. Plant produced proteins can also provide a less expensive and more readily available source of the protein as reagents or in other experimentation involving insulin proteins.
Claims15
A plant expressing insulin or an insulin-like protein.
A plant stably expressing insulin or an insulin-like protein.
Plant cells expressing insulin or an insulin-like protein gene.
A plant comprising a nucleotide sequence expressing insulin or an insulin-like protein not fused to cholera toxin B subunit.
A method of producing insulin or insulin-like proteins in commercial quantities, comprising providing biomass from a plurality of plants, of which at least certain plants contain a nucleotide molecule comprised of a heterologous nucleotide sequence coding for insulin or an insulin-like protein, wherein the nucleotide sequence is operably linked to a promoter to effect expression of the protein by the certain plants.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.