Tobacco has a bad name as regards its potential for addiction and cause of several cancers. Sometime back, it was in news that tobacco plant can be used to produce insulin.
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| English: Mature Ecuador Sumatra Tobacco Plant (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Now, scientists are able to produce
monoclonal antibody against rabies in genetically altered tobacco plant.
This antibody works by preventing the virus from attaching
to nerve endings around the bite site and keeps the virus away from traveling up
in the central nervous system.
Rabies is the consequence of the getting bitten by rabid
animals; most commonly from dog and monkey. There is so to say no treatment at
present for rabies; but, it is preventable by vaccination.
At present vaccines are based on chick embryo cell, some
other cell culture like vera cell and human cell culture. Human cell culture is
the costliest of all.
Producing an inexpensive antibody in transgenic plants may open
up the prospect of adequate rabies prevention.
This antibody was produced using transgenic tobacco plants
as an inexpensive production platform. The antibody was purified from the plant
leaves and characterized with regards to its protein and sugar composition.
The antibody was also shown to be active in neutralizing a
broad panel of rabies viruses, and the exact antibody docking site on the viral
envelope was identified using certain chimeric rabies viruses.
Being able to grow safe, humanized antibodies in genetically
modified tobacco should reduce costs to make treatments more accessible, and
save more lives.
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