2-Plants: GE pharma crops - The ultimate health food

[GENET <coordination@genet-info.org>]

Dear GENET-news readers,

GE pharma crops are en vogue. Some time ago, the PR claimed that they
will be used as "edible vaccines": poor people in developing countries
could grow their own GE banana and get the vaccination with breakfast
every morning. This sort of PR is still be promoted in countries with
little debate on GE and in notorios pro-GE media.

The story below posted in the New York Daily tells the readers: " ...
heat destroys vaccines, so to get the benefit you'd have to eat the food
raw. ... For one thing, says Robert Rose, associate professor of medicine
at the University of Rochester, fresh food has a relatively short shelf
life. You can't stick your vaccine-laden banana in the fridge and use it
sometime in the next six months. Second, unless the food is grown in
controlled conditions, you can't be sure it has the correct amount of
protective antigen. ... In the end, the plant guys say, the banana,
tomato, potato or other edible vaccine food will probably be sliced and
diced, frozen, ground to powder and either pressed into chips or tucked
into a pill to make a stable med ...".

A story on the similar topic at Betterhumans.org quoting Russian
scientists tells the readers: "Ketchup [GENET/HM: cooked!] could soon
fight AIDS thanks to tomatoes engineered by Russian scientists to produce
a vaccine against the disease. ... Edible vaccines are thought to have
many advantages, including the fact that they can be made cheaply and
distributed without special storage and transportation needs. ... seeds
from the original plants also produced transgenic plants, which means
that they could be widely dispersed to let people grow their own vaccines."

No wonder that people hesitate to beleave in GE scientists when
considering the benefits and risks of GMOs.

Regards,
Hartmut Meyer


                                  PART I
------------------------------- GENET-news -------------------------------

TITLE:  The ultimate health food
SOURCE: New York Daily, USA, by Carol Ann Rinzler
        http://www.nydailynews.com/city_life/health/story/209617p-180648c.html
DATE:   7 Jul 2004 

--------------------- archive: www.genet-info.org/ --------------------


The ultimate health food

Vaccines obtained by eating common foods will take the pain out of inoculation

If an adventurous band of plant biologists has its way, the world's
children - and their needle-phobe parents - will someday get their
vaccine inoculations with dinner rather than from a sharp stick in the arm.

Vaccines protect by introducing a substance called an antigen into your
body. The antigen - a live or killed microbe particle - provokes an
immune response in which the body produces antibodies to fight the
antigen. This reaction inoculates you by teaching your body how to fight
a specific infectious agent, such as the flu virus. If you are exposed
later on, you are ready to beat the bug.

Most modern vaccines are injected. Some, like the polio vaccine, may be
delivered on a sugar cube. Others can be inhaled. But for 15 years,
Charles Arntzen, founder of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State
University, and his fellow researchers across the country have been
working toward creating "edible vaccines," that is, vaccines created by
inserting the antigen, a viral gene, into food.

Not just any food, mind you. As John Treanor, professor of medicine in
the Infectious Diseases Unit at the University of Rochester, explains,
heat destroys vaccines, so to get the benefit you'd have to eat the food
raw. To date, researchers have concentrated on potatoes, tomatoes and
bananas, with the emphasis on the latter two because - let's face it -
raw potatoes are no treat.

The primary target for the vaccines is diarrheal diseases such as cholera
and E. coli, which kill more than 2.5 million children under the age of 5
every year. Other possibilities include the Norwalk virus (which has
played havoc with cruise liner vacations), hepatitis B and HIV, the virus
that causes AIDS.

In trials with cows, mice, rabbits and mink, antigen-containing tobacco
leaves, alfalfa, tomatoes and lettuce leaves have been able to trigger
immune reactions to diseases as varied as anthrax and the common cold.
The Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), the FDA division
that approves vaccines, never comments on tests in progress.

But in a handful of FDA-approved human studies at the National Vaccine
Testing Center, the University of Maryland and Roswell Park Cancer
Institute in Buffalo, human volunteers who ate about 100 grams (3.5
ounces) of raw potatoes containing anti-diarrheal or hepatitis vaccines
showed an immune response similar to what you might expect from an
injected vaccine.

Most researchers expect edible vaccines for animals to show up before
edible vaccines for humans. When the human versions do arrive, the plant
scientists say they will be cheap, administered without a needle and
without a doctor.

Just don't expect to toss some seeds in the window box and grow your own.
For one thing, says Robert Rose, associate professor of medicine at the
University of Rochester, fresh food has a relatively short shelf life.
You can't stick your vaccine-laden banana in the fridge and use it
sometime in the next six months. Second, unless the food is grown in
controlled conditions, you can't be sure it has the correct amount of
protective antigen. Finally, nobody wants these genetically modified
foods to somehow slip into the general food supply.

In the end, the plant guys say, the banana, tomato, potato or other
edible vaccine food will probably be sliced and diced, frozen, ground to
powder and either pressed into chips or tucked into a pill to make a
stable med that can be produced with basic agricultural and food-
processing technologies available virtually anywhere around the globe.

No needles, no doctors, no fuss. Now that's a med any mother could love.


                                  PART II
------------------------------- GENET-news -------------------------------

TITLE:  Transgenic Tomatoes Fight AIDS
        Plants engineered to produce edible HIV vaccine
SOURCE: Betterhumans, USA
        http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2004-07-02-2
DATE:   2 Jul 2004

--------------------- archive: www.genet-info.org/services.html
--------------------


Transgenic Tomatoes Fight AIDS
Plants engineered to produce edible HIV vaccine

Ketchup could soon fight AIDS thanks to tomatoes engineered by Russian
scientists to produce a vaccine against the disease. Researchers from
Russia's Vector State Scientific Center for Virology and Biotechnology
and Institute for Biological Chemistry and Fundamental Medicine have
reported genetically modifying tomatoes to prime the immune system
against HIV, the virus behind AIDS.


Immune priming

Since HIV was reported to cause AIDS in 1984, researchers have learned
much about how a vaccine against it might work. The International AIDS
Vaccine Initiative, for example, says that it can take an average of 10
years for someone infected with HIV to develop AIDS, meaning that the
immune system can control the virus temporarily and that these defenses
could be boosted by a vaccine. The group, headquartered in New York City,
New York, also says that some female sex workers have been found to have
immunity to HIV, and that immune cells that can be stimulated by a
vaccine are thought to be responsible. Researchers think that by
presenting the body with HIV antigens-proteins that will prepare it to
attack the virus - they can create an effective AIDS vaccine.


Food as medicine

Edible vaccines are thought to have many advantages, including the fact
that they can be made cheaply and distributed without special storage and
transportation needs. According to the Russian researchers, transgenic
plants have already been cultivated that carry HIV antigens, but they are
not edible and can lose some of their therapeutic potential during
processing. Additionally, tomatoes can be grown widely, while some other
vaccine-engineered crops such as bananas cannot. The thinking is that
antigens from the transgenic tomatoes would activate an immune response
in the gut, causing people to produce antibodies against the protein.


Homegrown treatments

To create their tomatoes, the Russian researchers used a vector to
introduce genes encoding HIV virus proteins. They injected the vector
into germinating tomato plants and grew the plants in a hothouse until
they produced fruit. The researchers then tested the plants and found
that the HIV antigen was present in both the leaves and the fruit itself.
They also tested to see if the genetic modification was passed to
subsequent generations and found that seeds from the original plants also
produced transgenic plants, which means that they could be widely
dispersed to let people grow their own vaccines.





--


GENET
European NGO Network on Genetic Engineering

Hartmut MEYER (Mr)
Kleine Wiese 6
D - 38116 Braunschweig
Germany

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