14 DAY TRIAL // Russian scientists are developing genetically modified tomatoes that would include vaccines. In the poorest parts of the world it is often difficult to deliver vaccines to the people who need them even when such vaccines exist. For example the transportation of vaccines over large distances may require cold storage but that can be a serious difficulty in Africa in regions where electricity is not widely available.
Thus the envisioned solution is to include the vaccines in food products such as bananas, potatoes or tomatoes. Rurik Salyaev at the Siberian Institute of Plant Physiology and Biochemistry in Irkutsk, Russia, and his colleagues plan to develop vaccines against HIV and hepatitis B virus (HBV) that would be embedded in the plants themselves. Thus people could simply grow the cure to such lethal diseases.
According to a New Scientist article due to appear in the next issue, the scientists used the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens to shuttle a synthetic combination of HIV and HBV DNA fragments into tomato plants. These fragments include genes for various HIV proteins and the gene for an HBV protein called HBV surface antigen.
Such a change in the tomato plants prompts them to produce the proteins and, when eaten, they induce the body to create antibodies against the viruses. Tests on mice are encouraging: the mice produced large quantities of antibodies against both viruses and the location of the antibodies included the mucosal surfaces - the virus' entry gate to the body through sexual contact.