US
A tobacco plant-based vaccine has been developed by a researcher at Arizona State University. Qiang Chen, the researcher, took a small part of DANN from the Zika protein and put it into tobacco plants. DNA is what directs the production of the vaccine protein. Once enough vaccine material is produced, it is removed from the tobacco leaf.
According to Chen, the tobacco-based vaccine has benefits over traditional vaccines. “Most vaccines are based on either DNA or killed full viruses,” he said. “[For example], if you use killed virus as a vaccine – if you have an accident, potentially, you can inoculate live virus into people.” Chen chose to develop the vaccine in tobacco plants because it is simple to direct foreign proteins into them.
“Tobacco plants can grow very fast, very easily,” he said. “[They] produce a lot of leaves for vaccine production. Tobacco plants also produce a lot of seeds, so if you want to scale up production you can quickly get a large number of seeds.”
The new vaccine has been successfully tested in mice and monkeys, meaning the research team can apply for human clinical trials through the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).