Post date: Jan 05, 2012 3:33:54 PM
Israeli researchers generate anti-malaria drug from genetically engineered tobacco plants, improving prospects for its availability and mass production. In Africa, every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria.
MALINDI, KENYA (REUTERS) - Although tobacco is usually seen as a cause for diseases, its plants are now being used by Israeli researchers to generate a drug against malaria, one of the world's biggest killers.
The team, headed by Professor Alexander Vainstein from the Hebrew University's Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, used a novel method to produce the anti-malaria drug, artemisinin from a genetically engineered tobacco plant.
The drug is normally extracted only from the wild sweet wormwood plants (Artemisia annua) because the plants cannot be grown as crops, and due to the high cost of obtaining the natural or chemically synthesized drug. Low-cost artemisinin-based drugs are in short supply.
Vainstein told Reuters that despite extensive efforts made by researchers in the last decade, no one has been able to produce artemisinin itself.
"Today the drug is produced from Artemisia annua, it's a plant that is not actually agriculturally suitable product. So we modified tobacco and we now have tobacco plants producing the same drug. And this is actually the first time, as far as we know, that this final product was produced anywhere in any system," Vainstein said, after his research was published in the latest issue of the journal, Nature Biotechnology.
Vainstein and graduate student, Moran Farhi developed genetically engineered tobacco plants carrying genes encoding the entire biochemical pathway needed for producing artemisinin.
Since tobacco grows fast and has a lot of biological mass suitable for drug extraction, Vainstein said the new system will enable a cheap and mass production of the drug, paving the way for commercial production.
"You can grow a lot of tobacco plants. You know exactly how to treat them in order to produce a biomass (a lot of biological mass suitable for drug extraction). The life cycle of tobacco is very short so you can produce many many generations during the same few months and you can extract large amounts of the drug in order to really help combat the disease," he said.
The Yissum Research Development Company - the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's technology transfer company - has patented the innovation and is now seeking a partner for its further development, a process that may take up to three years, Vainstein said.
His four-year research was sponsored until now by a fellowship from Jewish Philanthropist, Isaac Kaye.
Malaria researcher, Professor Jacob Golenser from the Hebrew University's faculty of medicine said that the new development was an important step towards viable production of artemisinin and may also be used in the future to fight other diseases.
"It's an important step towards a better production of artemisinin which is a very important drug, being an introductory drug to some other derivatives that are nowadays used as a first-line drug against malaria and probably, in the future, also against some other diseases like cancer and some parasitic diseases," said Golenser.
According to the World Health Organisation, about 3.3 billion people - half of the world's population - are at risk of contracting malaria. This leads to about 250 million malaria cases and nearly one million deaths every year,
In Africa, one in every five childhood deaths are due to the effects of the disease and every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria.
Experts say that prompt and effective treatment with artemisinin-based combination therapies is an important way to control the deadly disease.