The expertise of Bart Van Droogenbroeck is in the plant biotechnological research. This research throughout the last twenty years has shown that plants represent an excellent alternative for the production of valuable recombinant proteins over bacterial fermentation and animal cell cultures. They can synthesize complex proteins antibodies and vaccines for veterinary applications in an efficient and correct way. In addition, plant-based production platforms offers other important advantages: production is safer thanks to the absence of human/animal pathogens in the plant material, they have a low-start up and production cost and are more flexible than contained cell cultures.
One innovative aspect that is studied in detail, relevant for the COST “Feed for health” proposal, is the use of transgenic seeds as a feed additive to realize passive immunization against important animal pathogens. Transgenic seeds, expressing pathogen-binding antibodies, provide a real alternative for replacing the EU banned antibiotics as growth promoters. This transgenic seed material can be applied as integral part of the feed, and so costly purification of the recombinant protein can be avoided. Passive immunization, a desired form of protection against gastro-intestinal diseases, thus represents a real alternative to in-feed anti-microbials. The recombinant anti-microbial proteins are harmless to animals and no chemical residues are left in the meat, thereby not compromising human health.

Publications:

• Van Droogenbroeck B., De Wilde K., Depicker A. (2008) Production of antibody fragments in Arabidopsis seeds. In: Faye L, Gomord V. (eds.), Methods in Molecular Biology: Recombinant proteins from plants, Vol. 483. Humana Press, New York, USA. Book doi: 10.1007/978-1-59745-407-0
• Van Droogenbroeck, B., Cao, J., Stadlmann, J., Altmann, F., Hilmer, S., Robinson, DG., Van Lerberge, E., Terryn, N., Van Montagu, M., Inzé, D., Liang, M., Depicker, A., De Jaeger, G. (2007) High-level expression of functional single-chain Fv-Fc antibodies in Arabidopsis seeds: aberrant localization and underglycosylation of the recombinant proteins. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 104: 1430-1435
• Lamblin F., Aimé, A., Hano C., Roussy I., Domon J.-M., Van Droogenbroeck B., Lainé E. (2007). The use of phosphomannose isomerase gene as alternative selectable marker for Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of flax (Linum usitatissimum). Plant Cell Reports, 26:765-772