GM tomatoes may be key to bird flu fight
Date: 5.4.2006
Genetically-modified tomatoes may become a key weapon in the global fight against bird flu.
Australian plant scientist Amanda Walmsley, of Melbourne's Monash University, is working on growing a vaccine against the deadly H5N1 virus in tomatoes.
Dr Walmsley, who has recently returned to Australia from the United States, was part of a team that developed the world's first plant-made vaccine to prevent a different disease that affects poultry.
That vaccine, for Newcastle Disease, was produced in tobacco plants.
She hopes to use similar techniques to develop an oral vaccine against bird flu in poultry.
It will involve introducing a gene from the H5N1 virus into the cells of tomato plants.
The gene would then tell the plant cells to produce a specific protein, found in bird flu, effectively making the tomatoes a factory for the vaccine.
Once birds were vaccinated, the protein would protect them if they came into contact with H5N1.
Dr Walmsley said the scientists planned to make a vaccine in injectable form first, and then trial oral and inhalable forms so that it could be delivered to poultry en masse.
She hopes to have a vaccine ready for preliminary testing in mice by the end of the year.
Bird flu has been sweeping the world's wild bird and poultry populations at an alarming speed.
The virus has spread to 37 nations on three continents, infecting 175 people, including 96 who have died.
Most of those were exposed to the virus through infected poultry.
But scientists are concerned about a possible pandemic if the virus mutates so it can easily be transmitted between humans.
A successful vaccine against the virus in poultry would reduce that risk.
Dr Walmsley said that eventually, the science may be used to test plant-made vaccines in humans.
"We would like to move towards that but, as you can imagine, it's a lot harder to get a vaccine approved for humans than it is for chickens," she said in an interview.
"We've reached the crawling stage in that we've got a plant-made vaccine out on the market, but we want to walk before we run.
"We're walking with the veterinary vaccines and then we'll try and get up and running with human vaccines.
"But there's a lot of regulatory and safety work we've yet to do to get to that stage."
Human vaccines are usually produced in eggs or yeast, making them unsuitable for people with egg allergies.
The bird flu project is being funded by the Australian Research Council and also involves scientists from Melbourne's Burnet Institute, the University of Melbourne, and Dow AgroSciences in the United States.
"Source":[ http://www.checkbiotech.org/root/index.cfm?fuseaction=news&doc_id=12458&start=11&control=194&page_start=1&page_nr=101&pg=1].
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