Buffalo, New York
February 15, 2005
Source: BBC
Online via SciDev.Net
Scientists
in the United States have developed a potential vaccine against
hepatitis B by genetically modifying potato plants.
The
modified plants produce one of the hepatitis virus's proteins,
which might be enough to boost the immune systems of people
eating the potatoes and protect them from infection.
The researchers at the
Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, found
signs of immunity in 60 per cent of the 42 people they tested it
on.
Hepatitis B
severely affects the liver and kills one million people each
year. Many of these are in developing countries, where buying
and storing the existing vaccine can be prohibitively expensive.
The simplicity and low cost of an edible vaccine would make it
ideal for global immunisation programmes.
The
prototype needs more testing, and there are questions over
whether the recently tested vaccine boosted people's immune
system strongly enough. But Yasmin Thanavala and colleagues,
whose results are published this week in
Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, are
confident it will lead to an oral hepatitis B vaccine that could
be given as a capsule or powder. |