BENEFITS

High expression levels. Infected larvae can express up to 1-3 milligrams of protein resulting in very low production costs. These costs are below those of transgenic mammals and far below those of cell culture.

Highly authentic product. Foreign proteins often show post-translational modifications more representative of the natural protein in the native organism when expressed in larvae than when expressed in insect cell culture (O'Reilly, et al., 1992, Andersons, et al., 1991 Yamada, et al., 1990). Tissue specific expression can also be important for biological function.

Multiple baculovirus expression vectors are commercially available. Typically, these vectors employ either of 2 non-essential genes, the polH or p10 locus that is abundantly expressed late in infection. Foreign genes inserted at these loci can be expressed to very high levels. Baculovirus vectors have been engineered so that recombinant baculovirus construction can be achieved in prokaryotic hosts and need not require successive plaque purification in insect cell culture. Insect larvae can be directly infected with recombinant baculoviruses derived from commercial vectors.

Flexibility in production leads to cost savings. Entopath produces large numbers of insect eggs daily. Entopath's flexible production system permits uniform production conditions at any scale. Any number of larvae can be grown from eggs to the developmental stage ideal for infection within 7 days. Following expression the larvae may be frozen at -4°C or colder for long periods of time prior to protein harvest. This permits great flexibility in scheduling protein recovery work.