Chances are when you think about tobacco you automatically think of cigarettes. But scientists have recently discovered another use for the plant-one with positive health implications-vaccine production.
It's no secret historically tobacco has played an important role in North Carolina's economy. While the number of farms has declined over the past several years, the Tar heel state remains the number one tobacco producer in the country. But there is a new strain of Australian tobacco coming to the state-one you won't find in a field-but in a greenhouse.
Medicago, a Canadian based biotechnology firm is building a 42 million dollar, 97,000 square foot vaccine facility in Durham.
"This is our foray into the U.S. marketplace, the facility we're building here is in collaboration with DARPA, part of the U.S. Defense Agency," says Mike Wanner, Medicago's Vice President of U.S. Operations. "It represents our entree into the influenza market so it will be a vaccine production facility capable of producing up to 10 million doses of vaccine in a given month."
What this facility hopes to avoid is the delays in producing vaccines that was experienced during the 2009 H1NI influenza outbreak. Flu vaccines are typically grown in chicken eggs-a process that is often slow and expensive.
"If we talk about something that's a traditional egg based vaccine there's a long lead time," says Todd Talarico, Sr., Director of Industrial Process. "You have to have flocks ready. You have to start six months early to have your chickens ready to go."
With this new process scientists isolate a protein from the flu virus that triggers a protective immune response in patients. They implant the gene for this protein into bacteria. They then infect a tobacco plant with the bacteria. The gene is incorporated into the plant directing it to produce the flu proteins. The proteins are then extracted from the plant and purified into a vaccine.
"It's a beautiful system for a vaccine because it looks a lot like a regular virus but when we give the vaccine to people their body thinks it's a virus and responds very well," says Talarico. "It produces a good immune response so you get good protection against that."
Wanner says from the time the DNA is sequenced for a particular strain of flu Medicago can be in production rapidly and have vaccines ready within approximately 60 days.
"It improves the quality of the vaccine that's available and then responding to a pandemic situation where we would need 350 million doses as quickly as possible it gives us an opportunity to do that."
Medicago in Latin means alfalfa-a plant the company used to use when working with what it calls VLPs or virus like particles. VLP's mimic the native structure of a virus, allowing them to be recognized by the immune system, but unlike viruses they lack the core genetic material, making them non-infectious and unable to replicate. What Medicago discovered are VLPs actually expand better in the porous tobacco leaf.
"Tobacco plants are also very hardy," says Wanner. “They grow fast and they're easy to work with so that's why the switch was made."
With this process tobacco plants germinated from seed can be ready within just five weeks and unlike its plant in Quebec this production facility in North Carolina will be fully automated. Robotics and automation will move the plants thru out the greenhouse.
"When you're someday able to deliver 100-200 million doses in a very brief amount of time and supply a very real demand that's very energizing I think," says Wanner.
While this process is geared for flu vaccines, researchers say the tobacco plant offers limitless possibilities for a variety of other vaccines. Medicago says the technology is mobile and production facilities can easily be replicated anywhere in the world.
"You can envision this as working with any protein that you would want to use," says Talarico. We happen to use the protein that's on the outside surface of the flu HI the hemoglobin protein is the one we're currently working with but any protein you can imagine would work in this. It's a great engineering and science challenge and it can really make a difference in people's health."
Medicago says it decided to build its new facility in North Carolina because of the high quality workforce with biotechnology experience. The facility expects to hire nearly 80 employees. The production facility should be fully operational by September.
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