Recombinant Tobacco Capable of Producing Medication at Lower Cost

*Permission pending from www.phytomedics.com*

Biopharmaceuticals are a large genre of medical research and production; this page addresses the branch of biopharmaceuticals that deals with production of pharmaceuticals in plants. Biopharmaceuticals are different from edible vaccines and plantibodies because biopharmaceuticals do not deal directly with issues involving the immune system of the human body. Biopharmaceutics investigate the treatment of medical disorders such as genetic diseases and the human body’s inability to produce certain proteins that are essential to the proper metabolic upkeep of the body. Like the production of edible vaccines and plantibodies, biopharmaceuticals utilize recombinant DNA gene transfer to produce proteins in plants that need to be administered to patients with certain diseases ( Giddings, G et al 2000 ). Such diseases include cystic fibrosis, liver disease and Gaucher’s disease. The treatment of these diseases are often extremely costly and production of necessary medications are often deprived in third world nations, which compounds the problem of treatment of such diseases in underdeveloped nations. Many of the plants that are able to produce biopharmaceuticals such as tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes and Ethiopian mustard are easily harvested and produced in underdeveloped nations. If biopharmaceuticals were brought to nations deprived of a sufficient medical infrastructure, then diseases like cystic fibrosis and Gaucher’s disease, which are basically incurable due to lack of wealth and availability, may otherwise provide an opportunity for treatment.

This webpage was created by David Shelburne ’04 & Paul Toran ’03 as an assignment for an

undergraduate course—Bio 361: Genetically Modified Organisms—at Davidson College.

Send comments, questions, and suggestions to: dashelburne@davidson.edu and/or patoran@davidson.edu