Biopharming - Healing Foods, A Novel Concept

‘Biopharming’ is the production of metabolites valuable to medicine or industry in plants traditionally used in an agricultural setting. It promises more plentiful and cheaper supplies of pharmaceutical drugs, including vaccines for infectious diseases and therapeutic proteins for treatment of conditions such as cancer and heart disease. The bioreactors containing cell cultures that are required for large-scale productionare extremely expensive and the increasing demand for therapeutics prompted researchers to seek new ways of producing large quantities of affordable and safe drugs. Biopharming offers commercially viable alternatives for allopathic drugs as value added foods.