(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The treatment against a common form of cancer could
come from plants, according to new findings from the Stanford University School
of Medicine. The findings came in the first human tests of a vaccine grown in
genetically engineered plants.
The treatments, which would vaccinate cancer patients against their malignant
cells through injection, could lead to earlier personalized therapy to tackle
follicular B-cell lymphoma, an immune-system malignancy diagnosed in about
16,000 people each year.
The standard treatment for the disease is chemotherapy. Doctors say it has such
severe side effects that patients often choose to wait out the early stages of
the illness. However, plant-grown vaccines, which lack side effects, could allow
earlier, more aggressive treatment of cancer.
"This would be a way to treat cancer without side effects," Ronald Levy, MD,
senior author of the study, was quoted as saying. "The idea is to marshal the
body's own immune system to fight cancer."
The researchers used tobacco plants that were genetically engineered to
reproduce the vaccine. Scientists infected a tobacco plant with the
gene-carrying virus by scratching the virus on its leaves. The virus takes the
gene into the plant's cells, which then produces antibodies. Technicians then
snip off the plant's leaves and grind them up. Only a few plants are needed to
make a vaccine for a patient. None of the harmful chemicals end up in the
purified vaccines.
"It's pretty cool technology," Levy was quoted as saying. "And it's really
ironic that you would make a treatment for cancer out of tobacco."
The next step is a phase-2 clinical trial to test the effectiveness of
plant-grown vaccines in a larger group of lymphoma patients.
SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
