Tobacco plants could provide pharma products, says Bayer

Although tobacco is almost universally seen as a recreational plant that damages health, it could, at some point, become a reliable source of vital vaccines. The background to this view is that researchers at German drug and chemicals group Bayer are currently developing tobacco plants that could provide pharmaceutical products such as antibodies to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases or vaccines to prevent influenza.

Gert Seidl, global project leader at Bayer Innovation and in charge of the firm's "plant-made pharmaceuticals" project, views these plans as extremely realistic" and hopes that "in 10 to 15 years," this work will be yielding pharmaceutical substances of particularly high quality that are also extremely economical to produce.

The next step, expected to occur this year, is the definition of a protein that can go forward into clinical development. Also, a pilot plant is due to be on stream in 2007.