[英语，新闻]Potato-grown Hepatitis B vaccine pill

StephenW

DELAVAN — Outside, it was a chilly, damp April morning. Nothing much was growing in the industrial park on Delavan’s east side.
Inside, however, the weather was sunny and bright and plants were bursting into life.
They looked like plain, boring potato plants, although the bright green leaves were a pleasant sight this time of year.
But these potatoes are like no others in the world.
They make medicine.
Bob Britt beamed as he took guests into the laboratory at PlantPharm BioMed on Woolsey Street in Delavan.
“This is the farm of the future,” Britt said.
In other words, it is “the world’s leader in plant-derived biomanufacturing.”
That’s the business of using living tissue to make medicine. Most often, companies use yeasts, insects, fish or mammalian tissue, according to PlantPharm literature.
Britt has worked in agribusiness for 35 years, mostly in the hybrid seed business. Today, his job is a hybrid—commercial agriculture married the pharmaceutical industry.
“We formed PlantPharm specifically for taking the product into the marketplace,” Britt said. “We already know what we’re doing on the agriculture end.”
Britt and his partners at PlantPharm have genetically engineered the plants to create the hepatitis B vaccine. The production method will make a cheaper, more stable hepatitis B vaccine than is available on the market, and the Delavan company is poised to be the first to make it happen, Britt said.
How it works
Britt said he’s using plant tissues to replicate a vaccine. He and his partners have been working on perfecting the process since 1998 and have had to work through a lot of challenges.
They started with a genetically modified potato plant that was guaranteed free of diseases and engineered to grow quickly.
Genetic engineering is the science of replacing or adding a gene to an organism’s genetic code, Britt said.
The PlantPharm team started “knocking out genes” and replacing them—one at a time—with a gene that creates a protein that produces the hepatitis B vaccine.
Each change had to be tested because each had a potentially unpredictable effect on the way the plant grew, Britt said.
Another challenge was one any gardener is familiar with: the weather.
Other companies that have tried growing plants for pharmaceutical use did so outdoors in fields, Britt said. But the weather is too unpredictable, and it’s too hard to keep the sensitive material safe, he said.
“You don’t want a raccoon running off with a cutting and planting it in your garden,” Britt said.
To combat the unpredictability of weather and raccoons, Britt and his son Barrett designed an indoor growing system. Flats of potato cuttings grow inside stacks of clinical cabinets built by PlantPharm employees. A computer controls the temperature, the lights and the moisture inside the cabinets. Lights flash to warn Britt of any sudden changes in the “weather.”
PlantPharm can harvest as many as six crops a year, according to company literature.
The enclosed environment not only provides optimum growing conditions but also keeps the modified plants enclosed so they don’t mingle with nonengineered plants, the literature states.
Plants are a good medium for producing pharmaceuticals as opposed to using mammalian tissues, Britt said, because plants don’t transmit diseases to humans. Plants grow faster than animals, and it’s much less expensive to screen plants for high yields than it is to screen cattle, he said.
What’s next
In clinical trials, humans who have eaten the raw potatoes have then developed the hepatitis B antibodies. That means the potatoes accurately produced the vaccine, Britt said.
Potatoes don’t make good vaccine delivery systems, however.
Eating a potato wouldn’t deliver an accurate does of vaccine, Britt said.
That’s where the pharmaceutical experts come in.
Next, Britt and his team will reduce the potato material into pills and enter into the clinical test phase required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The potato-grown pills would change the market, according to material PlantPharm BioMed prepared for potential investors.
A vaccine in pill form would be easier to store and transport than injected vaccines that must be refrigerated, Britt said. Pills also would have a longer shelf life than injectable vaccines, he said.
PlantPharm will be the first company to create an oral hepatitis B vaccine, as far as Britt is aware. He is amazed where his career that started in agriculture education and then seed sales has ended up.
“Who would have thought you could get agriculture into pharmaceuticals?” Britt said.
WHAT IS HEPATITIS B?
Hepatitis B is a liver disease that usually is not fatal in healthy adults. The disease can be chronic, however, and can lead to serious liver damage, according to the national nonprofit hepatitis B Foundation.
The disease is transmitted sexually, by the use of contaminated needles or from mother to child.
Worldwide, 2 billion people have been infected with hepatitis B, according to data from the foundation. Of those, 400 million people have become chronically infected, which means they are unable to get rid of the virus.
In China alone, 500,000 people die each year from hepatitis B, according to PlantPharm BioMed research. The country now requires babies to be vaccinated for the disease, which creates a demand for 51,000 vaccine doses each year.
In India, 1 million of the 25 million babies born every year run the risk of developing chronic hepatitis B.

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Published at: http://www.GazetteXtra.com/news/2011/apr/24/delavan-company-produces-medicinal-potatoes/

StephenW

德拉 - 以外，这是一个寒冷，潮湿日上午。成长中没什么对德拉的东侧工业园区。

在里面，但是，天气晴朗明亮，植物在生命中绽放。

它们看起来很像普通的，无聊的马铃薯植物，虽然明亮的绿色树叶一片喜气洋洋每年的这个时候。

但是，这些马铃薯就像在世界上没有其他人。

他们使药。

鲍勃布里特横梁，他进入了生物医学上伍尔西在PlantPharm在德拉街实验室客人。

“这是未来的农场，”布里特说。

换句话说，它是“世界的植物源生物制造的领导者。”

这是用活组织，使医药企业。大多数情况下，公司利用酵母，昆虫，鱼类或哺乳动物的组织，根据PlantPharm文学。

布里特曾在35年的农业综合企业，主要是在杂交种子业务。如今，他的工作是一种​​混合商业农业嫁给了制药业。

“我们形成了以产品进入市场PlantPharm具体来说，”布里特说。 “我们已经知道我们对农业月底做的事情。”

布里特和他的伙伴们在PlantPharm的植物基因工程乙肝疫苗的创建。生产方法将作出更便宜，更稳定的乙肝疫苗比市场上可用，而德拉公司有望成为第一个做到这一点，布里特说。

它是如何工作

布里特说，他利用植物组织复制的疫苗。他和他的伙伴一直在努力完善该进程自1998年以来，不得不工作，通过了许多挑战。

他们开始用转基因马铃薯植株的自由得到保障，疾病和工程快速增长。

基因工程是更换或添加一个基因，一个生物体的遗传密码学，布里特说。

该PlantPharm队开始“敲除基因”和替换他们，一次一个与一个基因，该基因产生的蛋白质，从而产生B型肝炎疫苗。

每一次改变都必须进行测试，因为每个人都有一份对植物生长的方式，潜在的不可预知的影响，布里特说。

另一个挑战是任何一个园丁是熟悉的：天气。

已经尝试过药用植物生长的其它公司这样做是在户外领域，布里特说。但天气太不可预测的，它太硬，保持敏感材料的安全，他说。

“你不想要一个浣熊运行具有切割和种植在你的花园而过，”布里特说。

为了打击和浣熊的天气，不可预测布里特巴雷特和他的儿子设计了一个室内越来越多的制度。马铃薯扦插单位内增长了PlantPharm员工建立临床柜栈。一个电脑控制温度，灯光，橱柜内的水分。灯光闪烁，提醒中的任何突然变化布里特“天气。”

PlantPharm可以收获农作物多达六一年，根据公司文学。

在封闭的环境不仅提供最佳生长条件，而且也使基因植物封闭，使他们不与nonengineered植物，文学交融的国家。

植物是一种用于生产而不是用哺乳动物组织中，布里特说，因为植物并不会传染疾病给人类使用的药物的良好培养基。植物生长速度比动物，它的更昂贵的高产量的植物筛选比是筛选牛，他说。

下一步是什么

在临床试验中，人类谁吃了生的土豆，然后开发了B型肝炎抗体。这意味着，土豆准确地生产的疫苗，布里特说。

土豆不好好疫苗传递系统，但是。

吃土豆将无法提供准确的疫苗那样，布里特说。

这就是医药专家进来

下一步，布里特和他的团队将减少入丸马铃薯材料并进入临床试验由美国食品和药物管理局要求的阶段。

马铃薯种植的药丸将改变市场，根据生物医学材料PlantPharm潜在投资者准备。

以药丸形式的疫苗会更容易储存和运输比注射疫苗必须冷藏，布里特说。丸也将有一个比注​​射疫苗的保质期更长，他说。

PlantPharm将是第一个公司创造一种口服乙肝疫苗，据布里特知道。他惊奇的地方开始他的职业生涯，在农业教育，然后种子销售已经结束了。

“谁会想到你能进入药品农业？”布里特说。

什么是乙型肝炎？

B型肝炎是一种肝脏疾病，通常不是在健康的成年人死亡。这种疾病可以是慢性，但是，并可能导致严重的肝损害，根据国家非营利性乙型肝炎基金会。

这种疾病是通过性传播，受污染的针头或由母亲传染给孩子使用。

在世界范围内，20亿人已经感染了乙肝，根据基础数据。其中，4.0亿人成为慢性感染，这意味着他们无法得到清除病毒。

仅在中国，50万人每年死于乙肝，根据PlantPharm生物医学研究。这个国家现在需要的婴儿要为疾病，创造了一个51,000剂疫苗接种，每年的需求。

在印度，100万，每年出生的运行发展为慢性乙型肝炎的风险的25万婴儿
发布于：http://www.GazetteXtra.com/news/2011/apr/24/dela​​van-company-produces-medicinal-potatoes/