Source of Genes 

Commercial Purpose ¹

 Company Producing

 Company Selling ²
(product number)

Aprotinin

AproliZean

Corn

Cow 

Research and manufacturing 

ProdiGene 

Not available

Aprotinin

Apronexin 

 Tobacco ³

Cow 

Research and manufacturing 

Large Scale Biology 

Sigma Chemical Company (A6103)

Avidin

Recombinant avidin 

Corn 

Chicken 

Research and diagnostic reagent 

ProdiGene 

Sigma Chemical Company (A8706) 

B-glucuronidase (GUS)

Not available

Corn 

Bacteria 

Research and diagnostic reagent 

ProdiGene 

Not available

Trypsin

TrypZean 

Corn 

Cow 

Research and manufacturing 

ProdiGene 

Sigma Chemical Company (T3568 and T3449) 

Lactoferrin

Not available 

Rice 

Human 

Research 

Ventria Bioscience 

Sigma Chemical Company (L4040) 

Lysozyme

Not available 

Rice 

Human 

Research 

Ventria Bioscience 

Sigma Chemical Company (L1667) 

Notes

(1) Information on specific commercial uses of pharmaceutical and industrial crop products is not available to the public. Some have potential applications for human or veterinary medicine but none has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates drugs.

(2) Most of these products have been commercialized through Sigma Chemical Company, which specializes in products for research and diagnostic purposes. AproliZean and B-glucuronidase have been commercialized according to ProdiGene documents, but their current availability is unknown.

(3) Unlike pharmaceutical corn, tobacco itself is not genetically engineered. Rather, a tobacco mosaic virus is engineered to contain a gene for aprotinin. The engineered virus then produces aprotinin in tobacco plants infected with the virus.

Sources of information about commercialization:

1. Aprotinin (corn) - Announcement of commercial production, 7/16/02. "ProdiGene Begins Scale-Up of Aprotinin From Plants." http://www.biospace.com/news_story.cfm?StoryID=9388520&full=1
2. Aprotinin (tobacco) - Manufacturing agreement, 3/8/04. "Large Scale Biology Corporation (LSBC) And Sigma-Aldrich Announce An Agreement To Manufacture And Distribute Plant-Produced Recombinant Aprotinin." http://www.biospace.com/news_story.cfm?StoryID=15379820&full=1
3. Avidin - Product launch, 6/10/97. "Sigma Chemical Co. and ProdiGene Inc. Launch First Protein Products From Transgenic Plants." http://www.prodigene.com/news_releases/97-06-10_sigma.html
4. B-glucuronidase (GUS) - Product launch, 6/10/97. "Sigma Chemical Co. and ProdiGene Inc. Launch First Protein Products From Transgenic Plants." http://www.prodigene.com/news_releases/97-06-10_sigma.html
5. Trypsin - Manufacturing agreement, 10/9/02. "ProdiGene and Sigma-Aldrich Announce an Agreement to Manufacture and Distribute Recombinant Maize-Derived Trypsin." http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_Oct_9/ai_92650944/print
6. Lactoferrin - No information about commercialization found, but product is available from Sigma at www.sigmaaldrich.com.
7. Lysozyme - No information about commercialization found, but product is available from Sigma at www.sigmaaldrich.com.

See also websites of ProdiGene (www.prodigene.com), Large Scale Biology (www.lsbc.com), and Sigma-Aldrich (http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/).