Page 178 - Binder2
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Improved Safety
Mammalian systems—especially CHO cells—are effective,
but they carry risk. These cells are biologically active and
evolutionarily close to human cells, which makes them
excellent producers of human-like proteins… and potential
hosts for adventitious viral agents, oncogenic DNA
fragments, or prion contamination.
That risk leads to intense scrutiny, expensive monitoring,
and long regulatory review cycles.
Plants avoid this entire class of concern.
• They do not host human viruses.
• They are free of endotoxins, common in bacterial
systems like E. coli.
• They have no capacity to generate infectious prions.
• And they are considered inherently safer by default
in many regulatory frameworks.
This doesn’t eliminate the need for quality control—but it
simplifies biosafety protocols and lowers the risk of
catastrophic contamination events that can derail entire
production lots.
When you replace bioreactors with photosynthesis and
containment, safety is no longer a downstream scramble.
It’s baked into the system.
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