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• Overproduction that exceeds the cell’s capacity for
proper quality control.

In plant-based systems, the same risks apply. Push too hard
on biomass production or expression vectors, and you can
overwhelm the host’s cellular machinery—leading to
misfolding, degradation, or inconsistent bioactivity
between leaves, batches, or harvest cycles.

In other words, you might get more protein—but it may be
the kind the immune system is more likely to reject.

The Real Output That Matters

If we’re serious about building durable biologics—
therapies that don’t just pass early endpoints but persist for
years—then yield needs to be reframed.

The metric shouldn’t be grams per liter.
It should be: functional, tolerable protein per patient per
year.

That means:

• Measuring bioactivity, not just quantity.
• Prioritizing folding fidelity and glycoform
consistency over raw tonnage.
• Designing for immune silence, even if that means
accepting a lower total output.

Because the most expensive biologic isn’t the one that costs
$2,000 per gram to produce.

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