Tobacco Plants Actually Can Prevent Polio Vol 6 rel 6

 Back in the Day...

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Defense ponied up $21 million to see if flu vaccines could be grown in tobacco plants. The project was a rousing success, producing 10 million doses in just 30 days. Next step — getting it past the FDA.

The $21 million was part of a DARPA program called Blue Angel, designed to overhaul instability in the vaccine supply chain. Frequent shortages are seen as a national security issue; the DOD wants soldiers healthy during an epidemic. Currently, vaccines are produced using an unwieldy process that dates back to the ’40s — injecting small bits of flu genes into a chicken egg and allowing them to grow. The current (and slow) production process takes five or six months.

Predicting how much vaccine to make is a yearly guessing game, as is devising the right strains of vaccine. Flu genes are constantly mutating; it doesn’t take long for a vaccine to become outdated.

The plants are grown in trays with hydroponic cultures of nutrients and water in a base of mineral wool, rather than soil, and in specially designed growth modules.

Light, water, and nutrients are precisely meted out. Specially designed robots bring the plants from station to station to carry out the various steps—from planting the tiny seeds and introducing the virus vector to harvesting the plants and extracting the vaccine proteins.

The plants grow for four weeks before the virus vector is introduced by means of vacuum infiltration. To do this, a robot picks up a tray of plants, turns it upside down, and submerges the plants top down in water. This water holds the vector containing genetic information that tells the plants which protein to produce.

Today...

Today, the bar was raised by hijacking a relative of the tobacco plant's metabolism to turn its leaves into polio-vaccine "factories", they are able to produce an "authentic mimic" of poliovirus called a virus-like particle. Outwardly it looks almost identical to poliovirus but - like the difference between a mannequin and person - it is empty on the inside. It has all the features needed to train the immune system, but none of the weapons to cause an infection.

The research group, who were partly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, were led by Professor Dave Rowlands from the University of Leeds and included Dave Stuart of Oxfordshire University. They were able to develop their technique by using the super-powerful microscope at Harwell's Diamond Light Source laboratory to get a clear look at the structure of their plant-produced 'empty virus shells'. Using the high-power microscopy they were able to confirm the structure of the tiny particles and show the external features of the 'fake virus' particles were identical to those of the Polio virus. This means that they stimulate the immune system reaction without actually causing an infection.

The breakthrough was made by employing technology that helped in the design of a new

synthetic vaccine to combat the foot and mouth disease virus (FMDV) to target the virus that causes polio. Professor Stuart, who is director of life sciences at Diamond and Professor of Structural Biology at University of Oxford, explained: "We were inspired by the successful synthetic vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease, also investigated at Diamond as part of UK research collaboration. "By using Diamond’s visualization capabilities and the expertise of Oxford University in structural analysis and computer simulation, we were able to visualize something a billion times smaller than a pinhead and further enhance the design atom by atom of the empty shells.

First, they needed to create new instructions for the plant to follow.

•      Hijacking a relative of the tobacco plant's metabolism to turn its leaves into polio-vaccine "factories".
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•      The starting material was the genetic code for making the outer surface of poliovirus.
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•      It was enhanced by combining it with material from viruses that naturally infect plants.
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•      The new instructions were then put into soil bacteria, which were used to infect tobacco.
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•      The infection took hold, the plants read the genetic instructions and started making the virus-like particles.
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•      Infected leaves were mixed with water, blended, and the polio vaccine was extracted.
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•      The virus-like particles prevented polio in animal experiments, and an analysis of their 3D structure showed they looked almost identical to poliovirus.

Great potential

But this technology is not limited to polio or even just to vaccines. As long as researchers have the right sequence of genetic code, they can make a vaccine against most viruses. And they have also used plants to make antibodies like those being used in cancer therapy.

Plants are also being investigated as a new source for the winter flu jab. Currently, it is grown in chicken eggs and takes months to develop. Prof Lomonossoff told the BBC: "In an experiment with a Canadian company, they showed you could actually identify a new strain of virus and produce a candidate vaccine in three to four weeks. "It has potential for making vaccines against emerging epidemics, of course recently we had Zika and prior to that we had Ebola. "It's highly responsive, and that's one of the great attractions of the technology."

The plants have the advantage of growing quickly and needing only sunlight, soil, water and carbon dioxide to grow. It means it could be a cheap and low-tech solution to vaccine development. But there are still issues to resolve, including making vaccine on a large scale.

Another issue is whether there is any risk from using plants to make the vaccine - does the tobacco-relative mean there is nicotine in the vaccine? Dr Tarit Mukhopadhyay, a lecturer in vaccine development at University College London, said: "The initial results look impressive. "However, there are very few plant-based vaccine manufacturers and almost no licensed human vaccines that are currently produced in plants." Denis Murphy, a professor of biotechnology at the University of South Wales, said: "This is an important achievement. "The challenge is now to optimise the plant expression system and to move towards clinical trials of the new vaccine."

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Rick's Cafe' American

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Source(s)

• http://www.heraldseries.co.uk/news/15473564.Oxford_scientists_grow_new_Polio_vaccine_inside_tobacco_plants_with_Bill_Gates__help/
• http://www.bbc.com/news/health-40925343
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/16/flu-vaccine-shortage_n_2482257.html
• http://rt.com/usa/future-vaccine-darpa-research-255/
• http://www.medicago.com/

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