Is Bio-pharming Tobacco a Pipe Dream?
One of the factors driving the research into the production of pharmaceutical products using genetically engineered plants is the high cost of producing these compounds using conventional techniques. The equipment conventionally used to produce the proteins, called “biologics,” from which the pharmaceutical products are derived is very expensive to construct and operate. By contrast, producing these biologics using genetically modified plants could be much less expensive, and production could easily and quickly be scaled up or down to meet demands. Tobacco is an ideal plant to use for the production of biologics because its genetic makeup is well known and tobacco is not a food crop. In fact, some scientists have referred to tobacco as the white mouse of the plant world. In addition, tobacco can be harvested before the plants reach maturity, reducing the risk of the genetically modified genes escaping into the environment. Another advantage of tobacco is that it yields a large amount o
