Medicago:

For sixty years scientists have used chicken eggs to make flu vaccines. The process is reliable but slow and expensive. North Carolina is home to a new biotech facility that will soon be making vaccines not with eggs, but tobacco leaves. The $42 million dollar processing plant will allow the government to respond more quickly to flu pandemics.

North Carolina knows something about growing tobacco. According to the N.C. Department of Agriculture, as of 2009 tobacco was still the number one cash crop with more than 4,100 pounds produced and an economic impact of more than $7billion. The tobacco industry has historically been important for agribusiness but it’s also true that cigarettes made from tobacco have well known health risks. New cigarette labels recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration will carry warnings such as “Cigarettes cause cancer,” and “Smoking can kill you.” According to data from the NC Division of Public Health, the number of deaths attributable to tobacco in North Carolina would equal about two fully loaded passenger aircraft crashing each week with no survivors.

What’s ironic is the same tobacco leaves that make cigarettes have a very promising and healthy biotech future. Scientists have figured out that the hardy, fast growing, porous plant is ideal for making vaccines. Tobacco is ideal because it’s cheap to grow and can yield large amounts of vaccine in a matter of weeks instead of several months under the egg method. The emergence of the H1N1 flu strain in 2009 after the flu vaccine supply had already been produced highlighted the flaws of egg vaccine production.

Medicago, a Canadian biotech company, is teaming up with DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the U.S. Department of Defense to develop the new tobacco based vaccine system. DARPA conducts research to protect soldiers from infectious diseases and is also concerned about the government’s ability to react quickly to a bioterrorist attac

For several years vaccine companies have tried a variety of techniques in harvesting vaccines in everything from caterpillars to dog kidney cells. Unlike animal parts, which might contain pathogens harmful to humans, plants have distinct advantages. Tobacco made vaccine is about a quarter of the cost of traditional egg vaccines and three times as fast to produce.

First, scientists engineer bacteria to carry the latest flu markers and wash them over the tobacco plants. The bacteria dump the DNA into the plant’s cells, which follow it’s instructions to churn out the flu protein. Technicians then grind up the leaves to extract the protein. Injected into a person, the protein works like any vaccine, training the body to attack the flu virus.

You could say tobacco is turning a new leaf in North Carolina, giving tobacco new life in our state—with very promising health benefits.