Tobacco-Based Vaccines Could Pwn Future Pandemics

(Nov. 4) -- Pandemics and bio-terror threats might one day be a health hazard of the past. A massive undertaking by the U.S. military is rapidly transforming vaccine production, yielding fast-tracked approaches to wipe out new illnesses before they spread.

The military's been after better bio-threat prevention methods since 2005, but it was only last year that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched its Blue Angel program to come up with quicker responses to emerging flu viruses.

H1N1 (the virus originally referred to by the media as "swine flu") was the catalyst for the initiative, which has led to $100 million in new research and development investments by the Pentagon agency.

"We've used H1 as an example, a proof of concept," Col. (Dr.) Alan Magill, a DARPA program manager, told American Forces Press Service, noting that H1N1 wasn't as lethal as initially feared. "We hope these technologies that are established will move on to address other issues besides influenza."

Tobacco-based vaccine production is the most exciting discovery to emerge from the program. Already, four military-funded facilities are producing mass quantities of H1N1 vaccines using tobacco plants as vehicles to grow the requisite proteins.

The plants are resilient and fast-growing, meaning that millions of doses can be produced in four weeks, rather than the six months that's required using existing production models.

And one company, iBio Inc., has already launched the first clinical trial of its tobacco-based H1N1 vaccine.

"The final trial will go on for six months, because we have to do safety monitoring," Magill said. "But we'll know whether the technology worked probably about the end of January."

So far, DARPA's tobacco-based endeavor is on track to transform pandemic response -- and create an entirely new industry for the novel approach to vaccine production.

But the agency's not done yet: Earlier this year, it doled out $5.3 million to a team at Arizona State University, for an "insta-vaccine" initiative that could yield new vaccines for emerging threats within seven days of detection.

There's even the possibility of detecting pathogens before they appear in the first place. DARPA's "Prophecy" program, launched last year, would accurately anticipate "the rate, direction and phenotype of viral mutations" -- giving health agencies worldwide a valuable head start.

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