Researchers To Test Method For Vaccine Production Using Tobacco Plants

Researchers To Test Method For Vaccine Production Using Tobacco Plants.

The Wired (2/24, Drummond) "Danger Room" blog reports that "a team at Texas A&M may have come up with a way to turn tobacco plants into vaccine-making machines." The Texas Plant-Expressed Vaccine Consortium is receiving $40 million from DARPA to "test the tobacco-based method and then offer up 10 million doses of H1N1 vaccines." Wired notes, "The Texas A&M consortium also received $21 million from Darpa for the creation of Project GreenVax, which will work towards the quick, plant-based production of a myriad of vaccines."

        The Houston Chronicle (2/25, Ackerman) reports that tobacco-based vaccines would mark "a hoped-for improvement on the antiquated egg-based technology that made the response to last year's swine flu outbreak so slow." The Texas Plant-Expressed Vaccine Consortium "will be headquartered in a 145,000-square-foot facility to be built on 21 acres at the Texas A&M Health Science Center in Bryan (TX)." Brett Giroir, vice chancellor for research for the A&M System, said, "If this works, we'll have a billion-dose-per-month vaccine facility in Texas, which would be by far the largest and most capable center in the world." The Wall Street Journal (2/25, White) "Health Blog" also reported the story.