Data from: Streamlined molecular farming of plant virus therapeutics for space flight and other low-resource environments

On-demand pharmaceutical production using plants could address this limitation. Plants are already cultivated in space, but the production of pharmaceuticals in plants is hampered by traditionally complex purification processes.

Here, we describe a simplified production and purification strategy for cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV), a plant virus-based therapeutic candidate with strong immunomodulatory properties suitable for cancer therapy and vaccine development. By combining vacuum infiltration and centrifugation, intact CPMV particles were recovered from the apoplast without damaging the plant tissue, eliminating the need for tissue disruption. Impurities in apoplast eluates were efficiently removed by ultrafiltration/diafiltration, exploiting the size difference between CPMV and contaminants.