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Tobacco giant plants $16M investment in Medicago
Canada's Medicago--which is making vaccines from tobacco--has earned a $16 million investment from tobacco giant Philip Morris. Philip Morris gains a 49.9 percent stake in the developer, along with a potential new use of tobacco that can save lives instead of threaten them. Representatives from the two companies met at a Vancouver biotech conference.
Medicago says it can develop a new avian flu vaccine using tobacco leaves for production purposes. Tobacco leaves grow quickly, offering a faster and potentially more efficient manufacturing process. A number of developers are advancing new vaccine production methods to replace the egg-based approach that is fraught with problems.
- read the Medicago release
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Comments
By Anonymous | Posted 11:03am | September 24, 2008
Dear Sir,
This initiative is interesting, but unfortunatly, the field do not need another way of producing Influenza proteins. There are already several approaches that are performing very well like productin in insect cells (Novavax, in eggs (GSK), that have been already accepted by the FDA. I am effraid that the regulatory organization migth be vey 'toff' with MEDICAGO because as far as I am aware, there is no vaccine commercialized at the moment that origin from plants. Finally, tobacco is probably the worst plant to use to produce protein because there several phenol-like compound in tobacco that can contaminate the purified proteins and provide toxicity. MEDICAGO should stick to MEDICAGO SATIVA as they originally started from which it is easier to get a cleanpreparation.
The field need new adjuvants, or additives that will improve the performance of the currently available vaccines. Hopefully, those new additives or adjuvants will be able to induce the immune system in all its strength (humoral and CTL response). Consequently, the vaccine will become Universal and protect against all the strains of Influenza including the avain flu.
Good luck to MEDICAGO anyhow....
