on the other hand, are in capable of replication in mammalian hosts,
present low immunogenicity and
toxicity,
are easier to manufacture and have high shelf stability (Prather et al., 2003). The usefulness of such plasmid biopharmaceuticals in the context of gene therapy and DNA vaccination is being extensively evaluated in animal and human studies(Kutzler and Weiner, 2008). Plasmid-mediated transient transfec-tions are also gaining popularity when it comes to the productionof recombinant proteins due to the reduced development timelinesrequired when compared with stable transfected cell lines