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Production of High Value Proteins in Insect Larvae

In many insects such as the housefly Musca domestica there is a rapid period of larval growth involving massive protein synthesis prior to pupation. Minos BioSystems is harnessing insect larvae as factories for the rapid production of high value proteins. A number of insects such as Medfly, silkworm and musca are already mass reared for applications such as Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), the production of silk, and for animal feed. Available mass rearing technology has the potential to produce -billions of larvae each week comprising hundreds of tons of biomass.  

A Medfly mass rearing facility


Minos BioSystems uses proven transposon technology to create recombinant insect larvae producing existing or novel functional human protein therapeutics such as growth factors, blood products, antibodies and enzymes in the larvae. Production of proteins in insect larvae, has many advantages over comparable plant, animal or cell culture based systems*.

The process is contained, rapidly scalable, has low capital and product cost, high volume output and an excellent biosafety profile. Annual yields are potentially over 10 tons of product for each manufacturing facility capable of producing 1 billion flies per week.

*See also Tomita et al. (2002) Nature Biotechnology Online Dec 16: DOI:10.1038/nbt771 and Lancet (2002) 360, 2053.

  

 
Western blot of larval extracts from hGH-expressing stable fly lines. Lane 1. Control fly, Lanes 2-5 transgenic fly lines