Discovery of novel proteins in Agrobacterium tumefaciens to improve molecular pharming yields of Trastuzumab

PlantForm Inc. (https://www.plantformcorp.com) is a Canadian biopharmaceutical company that produces antibody drugs using molecular pharming, where a genetically modified strain of Agrobacterium tumefaciens (strain At564A, derived from C58) transforms a genetically modified strain of Nicotiana benthamiana KDFX plant line (derived from USDA accession “TW16”) for biopharmaceutical expression. However, further research is required to comprehensively profile the proteome and secretome of At564A in their pipeline to identify areas of improvement. Using mass spectrometry-based bottom-up proteomics, we identified significantly altered abundance of virulence proteins after inducing virulence using acetosyringone and plant leaf extract from Nicotiana benthamiana.