Title: FW: [globalnews] Plant-derived drugs contaminate food crops
Enviroonment News Network
Plant-derived drugs contaminate food crops
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
By Carey Gillam, Reuters
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In Kentucky, tobacco plants are turning into cancer-fighting drug factories. In Virginia, corn is being harvested to treat cystic fibrosis, and in Nebraska, researchers are hoping that fertile farm fields will yield part of a cure for AIDS.
>From fields of barley in Washington State to Hawaiian sugar cane groves, U.S. scientists are cultivating agricultural advances that have nothing to do with food and everything to do with finding cheaper, faster, and more effective ways to treat a range of human ailments.
The work, which involves using human or other donor DNA to modify plants to genetically produce human proteins, has been ongoing for more than a decade. But it has only recently reached the critical end stage of clinical trials and commercialization where real patients are receiving dosages of the plant-derived drugs.
"Things are coming to market now... It's great that we're finally starting to affect patients' lives," said Barry Holtz, senior vice president of biopharmaceutical development at Large Scale Biology Corp. Through clinical trials, Large Scale is providing cancer patients with a lymphoma-fighting injectable drug processed in a tobacco leaf.
But as the science community celebrates its progress, it also is wrestling with opposing forces that fear unneeded medicines may accidentally wind up on a dinner table, making well people sick instead of sick people well.
Those fears were underscored last month when it was revealed that one of the leaders of the high-tech pack, Texas-based Prodigene Inc., had violated federal guidelines, inadvertently contaminating grain in Iowa and Nebraska with corn genetically modified for use in medicines to treat diabetes and diarrhea.
The disclosure set off a firestorm of debate, highlighted by opponents hanging a banner on a Nebraska grain silo proclaiming: "This is your food on drugs."
Opponents have seized on Prodigene's failure to isolate its crops as proof that science cannot control its technology, and have called for the government to ban plantings of pharmaceutical crops, at least with food crops such as corn.
"We shouldn't be doing this with our food at all, period," said Friends of the Earth spokesman Mark Helm. "These types of contaminations are going to occur and are potentially extremely dangerous. The practice of engineering drugs into our food crops ... is bordering on insanity."
NOT A PIPE DREAM
The backlash sparked by Prodigene's problems has driven fear into the tightly knit group of research and biotech firms racing to perfect a range of drugs from plants.
Many are angry at Prodigene, which is facing a federal inquiry now into its "pharming" practices, fearing its missteps may spoil the playing field for the rest.
"It is extremely disappointing,'' said Biotechnology Industry Organization spokeswoman Lisa Dry. "Nobody wants to see the technology impugned because it is so important."
Amid the furor, powerful food industry players such as the National Corn Growers Association and the National Food Processors Association are demanding the government tighten regulations on pharmaceutical plant research.
The biotech industry had said it would move research out of the Midwest farm belt starting in 2003 to help allay concerns about contaminating food crops, but backed off that strategy last week, saying it would leave such decisions up to federal regulators.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said it is examining options to more tightly control the research.
What is at stake in the debate, both sides agree, is potentially the health of people throughout the world. Where opponents see problems introduced into the food supply, supporters of the technology see live-saving possibilities.
Among the products now in the pipeline: a Hepatitis-B vaccine, a topical treatment for herpes, an injection that fights the spread of cancer cells, human insulin for diabetics, a vaccine that helps prevent cervical cancer and a treatment to help cystic fibrosis patients digest food.
One product expected to be brought to market soon is aprotinin, useful in controlling blood clotting in heart surgeries. The proteins currently used in the drug are derived from animals — beef lungs, to be specific — and are very expensive to cultivate, according to Prodigene, which is producing the proteins in corn in Nebraska.
The company is also working with the National Institutes of Health to develop an HIV vaccine.
"It's not a pipe dream," said Prodigene chief Anthony Laos, who envisions an edible wafer containing the answer to AIDS, which could be easily distributed to distant countries ravaged by the disease. "We can save millions of lives in the future."
MAKING IT WORK
The technique for intermingling human and plant DNA is relatively simple, scientifically speaking. After identifying a specific human protein and its function, researchers insert that DNA into the cells of corn or some other crop. As the plants grow, they reproduce the desired protein, which is then extracted by the researchers after the crop is harvested.
Plant-grown drugs can be developed in greater quantities, faster and much cheaper than traditional development in multi-million-dollar laboratories, the biotech companies say.
For Holtz and his colleagues at Vacaville, California-based Large Scale Biology, the challenge is no longer how to make the technology work, but how to make sure opposition to the technology doesn't kill its future.
Sixteen people have so far received the company's lymphoma treatment in the first phase of clinical trials, with successful outcomes for all, according to Holtz. A larger clinical trial is slated for 2003.
"We've worked so hard to do things right," he said. "Companies in this business are focused on doing good things for folks."
Copyright 2002, Reuters
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