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CommentsTobacco plants may provide virus cure
Scientists from Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute and Polytechnic campus have embarked on an ambitious, four-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Disease to tackle West Nile virus.
There is no current cure or drug treatment against West Nile virus, which in 2007 afflicted more than 3,500 people in the United States, resulting in 109 fatalities.
The interdisciplinary research project will use tobacco plants to produce novel therapeutic agents against the virus. Participants in the project include fellow Biodesign and Polytechnic campus colleagues, and scientists from Washington University in St. Louis.
The plant-made pharmaceutical group at ASU has demonstrated research success on a variety of plant-based vaccines, including the first U.S. regulatory approved-plant based vaccine against a poultry infection, or Newcastle’s disease.
In the West Nile project, the team’s goal is to have the plants produce antibodies against the virus in the hopes of neutralizing and destroying the virus before it can trigger its harmful effects. The therapeutic “plantibodies” designed to target West Nile virus will be produced in an innovative tobacco system using young tobacco plants.
