Abstract:The viral or bacterial infection is constantly diffusing worldwide and the incidence of death is dramatically increasing, representing one of the greatest disasters in human history. Nowadays, no effective therapeutic approaches have been licensed, despite the rising interest of the scientific research in this specific field, and the daily growing number of publications, while the need to find novel strategies is urgent. Evidence in the literature reported the antimicrobial activity of bioactive compounds in nature.
Plant biosystems are easy to scale up and inexpensive, and they do not require refrigeration or a sophisticated medical infrastructure. Regarding the context, the implementation of plant-made biopharmaceuticals in the developing world is an unescapable event.
At the same time, it is fundamental to invest in technical platforms able to cut down the time to tailor the eventual vaccine candidate to be effective to the epidemic. Plant Molecular Farming and improved genetic vaccines capable of plant sequences with immune-modulating activity, represent two promising approaches for the rapid and affordable production of countermeasures against emerging and bioterrorism-related infections.