The VECTORS project aims to create a rapid, safe, scalable, and low-cost plant-based manufacturing platform to drastically reduce production time and cost of viral vector-based gene therapies. Cirsium Biosciences leverages plant-based manufacturing (upstream and downstream) to reduce both production costs and time. Cirsium’s goal is to establish and validate a highly scalable, reproducible, cost effective, rapid plant-based viral vector production platform. Plants have been used to produce biologics for decades and are a proven production host for biologics that have successfully entered clinical trials and been approved by regulators. Cirsium’s process already achieves up to 80% reduction in manufacturing lead times for AAV gene therapies with room for substantial improvements and optimizations. If successful, the plant-based production of viral vectors used for gene therapies will help address the increasing demand for these vectors and the looming shortages for some vector types.