Edible Vaccines: Prophylactic Food

Oral delivery of vaccine proteins has been shown more efficient compared to subcutaneous or intramuscular injection vaccines due to the increased chance of provoking mucosal immune responses, which in turn stimulate cell mediated immune responses. Edible vaccines clutch swear as a cost effective, easy to administer, easy to store, readily acceptable vaccine delivery system especially in poor and developing countries. Another advantage of edible vaccine technology is the multi-component ability that is possible due to the crossing of two different plant lines. Resulting multi-component vaccine proteins are known as second-generation vaccines. They allow for several antigens to approach. A multi-component edible vaccine can also be multivalent. It can be designed to confer simultaneous protection against multiple diseases in humans and animals as well. There are several advantages over other methods of biological protein production viz. they are efficiently grown on agricultural land, low cost of production with minimum inputs, large scale production is possible by simply increasing the number of plants.