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Tomatoes in fight against bird flu
Melbourne, Australia
March 14, 2006

The humble tomato could find itself on the frontline of the fight against bird flu, with a collaborative project involving Monash University Research Fellow Dr Amanda Walmsley starting this month.

Dr Walmsley, from the School of Biological Sciences, is working on growing a bird flu vaccine in tomatoes after being part of the team that successfully developed a plant-made vaccine for Newcastle Disease, a virus that affects poultry.

Growing vaccines in plants such as tomatoes can overcome the contamination problems faced by scientists when they develop vaccines in eggs or yeast. It also solves problems for people with egg allergies who cannot take vaccines that have been developed in them, such as for influenza.

Dr Walmsley was part of the collaboration led by Dow AgroSciences that resulted in the world's first plant-made vaccine to be approved by the US Department of Agriculture's Centre for Veterinary Biologics. The Newcastle Disease vaccine was produced in tobacco plants and injected into poultry.

However, developing vaccines in tomatoes would allow vaccines to be fed en--masse to birds rather than injected, saving money and solving practical problems, Dr Walmsley said.

"We just harvest the fruit, freeze-dry it and there's your vaccine," she said. "That would be a lot easier than giving injections -- especially for a flock of 5000 chickens."

Dr Walmsley's bird flu vaccine will be developed for chickens, rather than humans. "The idea is to protect the Australian poultry market," she said.

Plant--made vaccines are developed by modifying a plant's genome to produce a protein -- originally sourced from the virus -- that protects against the virus as a whole. "The plant is a factory for the vaccine,'' Dr Walmsley said. "The plant actually produces it in its cells."

Dr Walmsley and researchers from the Burnet Institute hope to have a vaccine candidate ready by the end of the year for preliminary animal trials by Melbourne University researchers.

Within three years they expect to have a batch of vaccine ready for wider testing. "It's a very good collaboration with the backing of industry and good science. We're very confident that we can do it," she said.

The bird flu project is funded with an Australian Research Council linkage grant and involves researchers from Melbourne's Burnet Institute, the University of Melbourne, and Dow AgroSciences.

© 2006 AAP

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