Mushrooms may be good medicine

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- A Pennsylvania plant pathologist says mushrooms have great potential as biofactories for the production of beneficial human drugs.

"There has always been a recognized potential of the mushroom as being a choice platform for the mass production of commercially valuable proteins," said Penn State plant pathologist Charles Peter Romaine Friday in a release. "Mushrooms could make the ideal vehicle for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals to treat a broad array of human illnesses."
Romaine and his colleague Xi Chen have developed a technique to genetically modify Agaricus bisporus, also known as button mushrooms.
He said the mushrooms could be used as factories for producing therapeutic proteins such as vaccines and monoclonal antibodies, and hormones like insulin, or commercial enzymes.

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