South Africa
Scientists at University of Cape Town (UCT) have created synthetic viruses in plants which are used to test the efficacy of vaccines.
In a pioneering step towards using plants to produce vaccines against cervical cancer and other viruses, UCT researchers have generated synthetic human papillomavirus-derived viral particles called pseudovirions in tobacco plants.
“We’ve succeeded in making a completely mammalian viral particle in a plant - proteins, DNA, everything. That’s enormously exciting,” says Dr Inga Hitzeroth of the Biopharming Research Unit (BRU) at UCT.
In an open access study just published in Nature Scientific Reports, BRU researchers report using tobacco plants to create a synthetic viral particle known as a pseudovirion. A pseudovirion looks like a virus, but it contains no infectious viral DNA. Pseudovirions carry whatever DNA the researcher wishes to include within the shell of proteins that make up the outer coating of the virus.
Until now, such particles have only ever been created in yeast or mammalian cell cultures - this is the first time researchers have successfully created pseudovirions in plants.
The BRU is part of a new movement known as biopharming, which means using plants as biological factories. Biopharming has been used to create flu vaccines, potential Ebola drugs, and an enzyme used to treat Gaucher’s Disease in humans. The technique employs the cellular machinery within tobacco plants or other plant cells to manufacture enzymes, antibodies or even the viral capsid proteins (the proteins that make up the shell of a virus), which act as vaccines.