Plants 'Hijacked' To Make Polio Vaccine (bbc.com)

Plants have been "hijacked" to make polio vaccine in a breakthrough with the potential to transform vaccine manufacture, say scientists. From a report: The team at the John Innes Centre, in Norfolk, says the process is cheap, easy and quick. As well as helping eliminate polio, the scientists believe their approach could help the world react to unexpected threats such as Zika virus or Ebola. Experts said the achievement was both impressive and important. The vaccine is an "authentic mimic" of poliovirus called a virus-like particle. Outwardly it looks almost identical to poliovirus but -- like the difference between a mannequin and person -- it is empty on the inside. It has all the features needed to train the immune system, but none of the weapons to cause an infection.

Comments

INtriguing, and I wonder about Flu

[goombah99]

I assume they have tested this but to be a good antigen often you need to also have the proper decoration of the particle with lipids and sugars. I would doubt that plants could provide the right version of these for animal antigens. But it's possible this shows it's not neccessary or they have a way around it in the case of polio.

Even more intriguing is the potential for a flu vaccine. What makes that intriguing is that flu vaccine is often raised in eggs. And birds (hence eggs) are the natural resevoir of flu. So there's some risks associated with the use of the native host as the agent for growing the intentionally harmelss vaccine. And there might even be some selectivity on the animals part for things that are more bird adapted than others. With plants one presumably avoids that and the risk of a human catching a plant virus seem negligible.

Re:INtriguing, and I wonder about Flu

[arth1]

With plants one presumably avoids that and the risk of a human catching a plant virus seem negligible.

It's rare, but not unheard of that viruses jump entire kingdoms. A tobacco ringspot virus jumped to bees, for example.