DRUGS FROM PLANTS STIR DEBATE

Abstract

PRODUCING PHARMACEUTICAL drugs and vaccines from bioengineered plants holds great promise. The drugs will likely be far cheaper and easier to make than the monoclonal antibodies, hormones, enzymes, and vaccines now generated in mammalian cell culture systems or extracted from mammalian tissues. In addition, drugs extracted from plants avoid a risk posed by pharmaceuticals from animal sources—contamination with viruses or the prions that cause mad cow disease. Pharmaceutical plants offer an inexpensive and safe way to meet the growing need for biologic drugs, says John A. Howard, chief scientific officer at Prodi-Gene, a biotech company based in College Station, Texas. But using living plants as factories for producing drugs and vaccines also raises some red flags. If food plants such as corn are utilized, and the plants are not carefully segregated from their cousins sold as food, the engineered corn may end up in the food supply Eating small amounts of monoclonal antibodies ...