Tobacco Plants Treat Cancer
Reported July 24, 2008
(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