US
A cousin of the tobacco plant used in cigarettes is being used to grow the flu vaccine, with hopes it will produce more doses at a faster rate to make it more reflexive to influenza strains as they circulate.
Thousands of tobacco plants are being grown year-round in a greenhouse in North Carolina round by Medicago, which is 40% owned by Philip Morris and based in Quebec, Canada. The tobacco plants being grown in Durham’s Research Triangle Park, the leading and largest high technology research and science park in North America, are Nicotiana benthamiana, a flowering plant that is native to Australia and a cousin of Nicotiana tabacum.
Scientists hope to be able to make more of the flu vaccine faster, as the plants, and vaccine, grow in five to six weeks, as opposed to the five or six months it takes to prepare the vaccine in chicken eggs, which is how most doses of it are currently produced.
Medicago is in the midst of a phase 3 clinical trial for its flu vaccine, with hopes to put it on the market for the 2020-21 influenza season. Ten thousand people aged 18 to 64 have already been enrolled 10,000 in the study, including 4,000 in the US, as part of a Food and Drug Administration trial.
This tobacco-grown vaccine has been approved for trials in seven other countries around the world as well, including Canada. The results so far are promising: no side effects for people with allergies to tobacco, unlike people with allergies to poultry, which is a concern for the current flu vaccine.