Dow to make vaccines from plants

Dow Chemical Co. yesterday announced a four-year, $5.7 million research agreement with the National Institutes of Health to develop vaccines from genetically engineered plants.

The agreement follows NIH requests for new vaccine technologies against infectious diseases, including biological weapons.

Plant-based vaccines are cheaper and easier to produce than existing vaccines, Dow officials said. The plant-based vaccines could be used for nearly any disease.

“This can be used in any situation in which there is a need to develop a vaccine quickly and vaccinate large numbers of people,” said Dow spokeswoman Adrianne Proctor.

NIH is funding the project and Dow is managing it, which includes subcontracting some of the work to the University of Maryland.

Dow intends to develop vaccines from proteins produced on the leaves of greenhouse-grown plants. The proteins stimulate an immune response in the human body that blocks the development of disease.

Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology in Newark, Del., is a subcontractor providing Dow with “plant viral particle” systems for the vaccines.

The systems avoid the traditional vaccine process of fermenting bacteria in sterile vats by growing the genetically engineered proteins on plants.

“The technology is extremely important because it allows patients access to a variety of drugs and makes them more accessible,” said Lisa Dry, spokeswoman for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group for biotechnology companies. “Plants are such efficient producers of proteins that it lowers the cost of entry for the drug companies.”

Drug companies often spend $500 million to $700 million to build new vaccine-fermentation facilities, which can take five to seven years before they start operating, she said.

Genetically engineered plants eliminate the need for fermentation and reduce costs by about 50 percent.

“We anticipate that our plant technology will cut production time to three or four months, reduce cost, and produce effective and safe vaccines that can be delivered by capsule or nasal spray,” said Carolyn Fritz, Dow’s business director for industrial biotechnology. “This would be a big improvement over existing technology.”

The University of Maryland is supposed to screen the vaccines to ensure they work properly before clinical testing with humans.

University of Maryland officials said the pre-clinical tests they do would depend on the type of vaccine being developed.

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