Vaccine factory: Genes specific to a patient's tumour are injected into a virus which naturally attacks tobacco plants. This virus is scratched onto the leaves of a tobacco plant which then becomes a production factory for the vaccine.
Credit: Wikimedia
Fast and personalised
A week later, the leaves are ground up and then the protein is isolated and injected into the patient.
"This technology is special because it's fast and very suitable to this customised, personalised approach because each plant can be making a different person's (vaccine)," said Levy.
The vaccine would not be suitable for preventative purposes, Levy cautioned. But the same technique could one day be used to fight other diseases, he added.
"We use proteins for a lot of purposes in medicine like enzyme replacement and vaccines and antibodies," he said. "Growing human cells for production of proteins is really expensive and a long process and it's hard to maintain. Growing these plants is dirt cheap ... and we know how to grow tobacco plants really well."
Vaccine enhances cancer immune response
This is quite interesting. This type of treatment might replace the outdated, costly and 'medieval' chemotherapy and radiation treatments currently being used to treat cancer. Enhancing the body's own immune response is a better way to fight cancer.
It is sweetly ironic that the tobacco plant is being used to manufacture the vaccine, since tobacco products contribute so much towards the development of some cancers.
The only problem I see is that it might not be accepted by mainstream medicine because if the vaccine treatment is effective yet relatively inexpensive, there is not a big profit to be made. Some pharmaceutical companies may fight a cheaper solution to the chemotherapy drugs they currently produce and sell.
Daniel
South Africa
Yes, very interesting!
I agree with you Daniel, on pretty nearly every point. I think, though, that (1) if the treatment works (and it is bound to eventually), and (2) the news is spread the way it ought to be, immune system stimulation will eventually become standard medicine. Yes, the treatment is so simple that our profit making drug companies are likely to oppose further development of it--preferring the immense profits of chemo treatements and others which are so expensive and destructive to the body and its natural defenses. But I think the public will be increasingly able to fight the bad ethics of large companies. The ability of corporations to make profit at all has weakened immensely, and this will enable the balance of power to continue changing in favor of the public. That is a long story, though, and I hope you will look it up in articles in The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.
Arnold Perey, PhD
A New Perspective for Anthropology and Sociology