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Plants tweaked to produce SARS vaccine

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A vaccine for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), produced in genetically engineered tomato and tobacco plants, triggers anti-SARS antibodies in mice, according to a new report.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome emerged in China’s southern Guangdong province in November 2002 and spread as far as Canada by the following April. Before it was brought under control, the previously unknown virus killed 774 people and made about 8,000 sick.SARS has caused no more outbreaks in the general population, but the fact that it spread so rapidly around the world has increased demand for an effective vaccine, Dr. Hilary Koprowski and colleagues, from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, note in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Findings from previous studies suggest that a protein on the virus’ outer membrane, called the S protein, would be the best antigen for creating a vaccine.Using plants to produce vaccines is inexpensive, and an oral vaccine is generally preferable to one requiring injection, the researchers point out.They were able to manipulate a tomato plant and a low-nicotine tobacco plant to express a fragment of the S protein. When they fed mice the fruit of the tomato expressing this fragment, the animals produced SARS-specific antibodies. Production of antibodies also occurred after injection with a tobacco-derived fragment.”Progress toward the goal of establishing a safe and inexpensive vaccination program awaits further study with other animals and optimization of feeding protocols that might include, for example, oral administration of subunit vaccine expressed in tomato fruit followed by a boost with tobacco-derived antigen,” the scientists state.(Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Reuters Health, June, 2005)


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Dates

Posted On: 15 June, 2005
Modified On: 16 January, 2014


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