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YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 2, ARMENPRESS: In a Toronto laboratory, an experiment on mice is seeking to answer a question that could turn conventional wisdom on its head: Can tobacco cure cancer?
The plant best known for its negative health effects has been genetically engineered to create a drug comparable to Herceptin that could one day be used to treat highly aggressive breast cancers at a lower cost, Armenpress reports citing Globe and Mail.
That development is part of a plant-based trend in pharmaceuticals. It is based on the belief that proteins can be made faster, cheaper and easier, allowing patients in remote parts of the world to gain access to medicines once unaffordable. And it's not just tobacco. Plants being tested as biological drugs sound like they belong not in the laboratory but in the vegetable section at the health-food store: carrots for Gaucher's disease, duckweed – those green flecks on top of ponds – to treat hepatitis C, and safflower to make insulin.
"One day we're going to be able to grow these antibodies in plants like tobacco," said Leigh Revers, the associate director of the master of biotechnology program at the University of Toronto. "...The question is can you make this drug identically the same as the other guy and prove it's safe?"
Don Stewart, president and chief executive officer of PlantForm Corp. based in Guelph, Ont., whose company is running animal studies on tobacco, thinks so. The key, he said, is to remove sugars from the protein molecule, which can cause adverse side effects in humans, adding that using plants is a way of thinking "that's enjoying a resurgence at the moment."