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 |