AmerStem has state-of-the-art laboratory facilities focusing on green biotechnologies for vaccine adjuvants, agriculture, health, and medicine applications. AmerStem develops planet-friendly solutions and applies its unique green technology platform across a wide variety of plant species. We use solid principles rooted in our scientific observations that relate to growth behavior, biochemistry, metabolism and function of each specific target plant species to optimize production of high value bioactives.
We process biomass to extract high value bioactives while minimizing collateral hazardous waste. We care about the long-term negative effects of pollutants on soil, sediment, groundwater & surface water.
Our focus is on the natural mechanisms that plants use to fend off pests and environmental insults. We learn these important lessons and apply them to develop innovative sources of bioactives with applications in vaccine adjuvants, crop protection, and pharmaceuticals (therapeutic proteins).
Vaccine Adjuvants
Quillaja trees represent a major natural source of potent immunoadjuvants, including QS-21. We have developed an integrated platform to maximize biomass expansion from Quillaja-derived plant cultures and optimized production and yield of QS-21 and other saponins that are crucial for manufacturing vaccine adjuvants.
Agriculture
Plants utilize a vast array of saponins produced in response to invading pests. We exploit the plant metabolome (collection of plant metabolites) to control pests utilizing a natural methodology based on the way plants protect themselves and translate this potential into high-value bioactives for crop protection and yield improvement.
Recombinant Therapeutic Proteins
We have adapted our plant culture-based technology to yield an efficient and low-cost platform for the expression of key recombinant proteins that can be used as antigens for vaccine manufacturing, or as proteins with therapeutic applications (e.g., monoclonal antibodies). For this platform, we use fully edible, non-toxic plant species.