LARGE-SCALE CULTURE OF PLANT CELLS

Mass culture of plant cells in suspension culture to produce natural products was first proposed by Routier and Nickell (1956), and Tulecke and Nickell (1959). Although it is now possible to economically produce a few products such as shikonin, catharanthine, ginseng, paclitaxel, etc., in continuous cultures in 50,000L or larger bioreactors, further exploitation of this technology has been limited owing to continuing technical and biological problems, and high costs (see Staba 1980; Constabel and Vasil 1987, 1988). Consequently, attention has shifted during the past 25 years to using transgenic plants, rather than cell cultures, as ‘biofactories’ for the production of a variety of pharmaceuticals, vaccines, etc. (these are described in detail in other chapters in this volume; see also Ma et al 2005; Fox 2006; Murphy 2007).