ASHS Opening Plenary Session and William A. "Tex" Frazier Lecture [

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Keynote Speaker: Charles J. Arntzen Regents’ Professor and Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Chair of the the Biodesign Institute Arizona State University The American Society for Horticultural Science is pleased to announce that Charles J. Arntzen as this year’s William A. (“Tex”) Frazier lecturer. Arntzen is the Regents’ Professor and Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Chair of the the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. He is recognized as a pioneer in the development of plant-based vaccines. His discussion will focus on plant biotechnology as a promising platform for pharmaceutical protein biomanufacturing. According to Arntzen, “Plant biotechnology has had enormous impact on agriculture over the last 25 years as new horticultural and field crops have been introduced with novel, valuable traits. Some of these traits offer benefit to human health through improved nutritional value. In addition, we are now beginning to see more direct linkage to medical science as plants are being validated as a promising platform for pharmaceutical protein biomanufacturing with respect to subunit vaccines and monoclonal antibodies.” Arntzen will discuss aspects of the technology that offer unique advantages—these include avoidance of capital costs associated with traditional fermentation-based protein production (bacterial, yeast, CHO cell, or insect cell systems), scalable production advantages that allow delayed investment decisions while market demand is determined, and speed of transition from discovery to clinical trials for new pharmaceutical products. In addition, he will summarize the product development strategies that are emerging with respect to animal vs. human vaccines. With respect to plant-made vaccines, Arntzen says, “Early work in this arena emphasized the oral delivery of unprocessed plant tissue (edible vaccines) as a very inexpensive means of achieving immunization. While ongoing research indicates that this approach may work well with some animal and aquaculture vaccines, which are very important to maintaining a sustainable food supply, the regulatory requirements for human vaccines (related to uniform dosage, stability, and companion use of adjuvants) is driving the direction of product development toward highly purified protein antigens with formulation that may or may not use oral delivery.” He will review the progress made in moving Virus-Like Particles (VLPs) into human clinical evaluation to prevent traveler’s diarrhea caused by noroviruses. He adds, “My presentation will be based upon the efforts of a team of faculty members at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute (including Hugh Mason, Tsafrir Mor, Qiang Chen, Steve Slater, Guy Cardineau, and Melissa Herbst-Kralovetz) and our collaborators in industry.”