ChE 419 Students!

Case Study No. 3

Search on possible Research Topics Related to Biotechnology that has a potential to be a start-up
business or can help the community.
You can see some examples in the following link.
https://blog.kolabtree.com/top-10-most-promising-biotech-s…/
https://www.biospace.com/…/exclusive-top-20-life-science-s…/
https://www.angelkings.com/biotech-startups/
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-biotech-startups-in-Ind…
This case study is an open paper, meaning you can have your own format in presenting your research
though Infographics is very much appreciated rather than a paper full of words.
What should be in the paper?
1. A Product that you will be producing
2. The technology behind
3. customers/benefactors
This can be done by individual or by pair.
If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask or visit me in CTI office mon-friday (8-3pm)
Submission is on November 16, 2018
Thanks
-Ms. Neres
 Good and Evil: A
Cancer Vaccine from
Tobacco Plants
Human trial shows experimental vaccine is safe--but does
it work?
 By Nikhil Swaminathan on July 22, 2008

Credit: © IST OCKPHOTO/ MICH AL HRNC IR

In the first human trial of its kind, a vaccine grown in genetically

engineered tobacco plants has proved to be safe, paving the way to one day use
it to help combat a potentially fatal form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

USA that the experimental vaccine triggered the immune systems of 11 of 16
volunteers (with so-called follicular B-cell lymphoma) to attack their tumors
without any apparent dangerous side effects.

Some 18,000 Americans, typically between the ages of 60 and 65, are
diagnosed annually with this incurable, slow-growing type of cancer. Study
coauthor Ronald Levy, an oncologist at the Stanford University School of
Medicine, says that physicians generally take their cues from the disease,
waiting to see how fast it is moving—and treating it with toxic
chemotherapy (sometimes with radiation) only if it becomes aggressive.

He says that if future trials are successful, the experimental vaccine, which can
be made relatively quickly and cheaply, could become a short-term therapy
administered immediately after diagnosis to try to keep tumors in check.

"This may not be a replacement for chemotherapies, but a supplement for

them," Levy says. "A technology that is fast, like this one, is more amenable to
a watchful waiting approach than a technology that is slow to produce."

This and other anti-cancer vaccines work by pumping a patient full of the
same protein or antigen that is on the surface of tumor cells. Researchers
believe that if the body contains enough of the protein, the immune system
will recognize it as a potential danger and send out armies of disease-killing
cells to seek and destroy tumors harboring it.

To make the vaccine, researchers took a sample of a patient's tumors, which in

this trial were made up of B cells (white blood cells that help the body battle
disease and infection). They then extracted the gene from the cells that coded
for the antigen they needed (to help the immune system recognize the tumors
as threats). The key, researchers say, was to make enough of the protein
quickly to prompt an immune response.

In this case, the scientists achieved this by inserting the gene into a plant
microbe known a tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). Plants are infected with TMV
simply by scratching their leaves and depositing the virus into the tears.
Researchers discovered that the virus spreads throughout tobacco plants
within a week, in the process cranking out a surfeit of the coveted proteins.
The scientists ground the leaves and separated out the antigen, which they
then injected into volunteers.

They found that the immune systems of 70 percent of participants perked up

when blasted with antigens specific to their cancers. The researchers report
mild side effects, such as swelling around the injection site and mild to
moderate flu symptoms in some participants within a week of getting the
vaccine. Of the original group of 16—who ranged in age from 30 to 64—three
died (from the disease, not the vaccine), but 13 are still alive and their diseases
are in remission up to eight years since being given the vaccine.

All of the patients also received chemotherapy, so researchers cannot be

certain what role, if any, the vaccines played. Levy says more work is being
done to assess the vaccine's effectiveness.

Charles Arntzen, a plant biologist at the Arizona State University Biodesign

Institute, says a major plus is how fast the vaccine can be whipped up. "I think
without the speed," he says, "it would be hard to convince a cancer patient to
wait for a vaccine to be developed, rather than going on some other therapy."

Levy is trying to find a new biotech company to begin efficacy trials on

humans as soon as possible. He says that a vaccine like this one could be on
the market as soon as it proved effective and safe.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cancer-vaccine-tobacco-plants/
 THE CUTTING EDGE | Heard on the Beat

Tobacco Plants Could Offer Vaccine to Treat Non-

Hodgkin's Lymphoma
February 01, 1999|PAUL JACOBS

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Tobacco plants may provide a new way of treating non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer that will strike an
estimated 56,800 Americans this year. Scientists at Stanford University and Biosource Technologies are
developing a customized lymphoma vaccine produced in tobacco plants that are being grown indoors at
the biotechnology company's Vacaville, Calif., facility.

The most common form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma affects cells that produce antibodies to infectious
disease. For a decade, a Stanford team led by Dr. Ronald Levy has been treating patients by using
antibodies produced by the patients' tumor cells to trick the patients' immune systems into attacking the
tumors. Levy has reported that half of lymphoma patients tested respond to the treatment with longer
remissions and added years of survival.

The experimental vaccine is given following standard therapy, which can include chemotherapy,
radiation and the new drug Rituxan, which was also developed at Stanford and is marketed by IDEC
Pharmaceuticals of San Diego and Genentech of South San Francisco.

But producing an individualized anti-lymphoma vaccine is slow and expensive.

The Stanford researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they
have developed a rapid way to make a similar vaccine in tobacco plants and that it successfully
protected mice from a lethal dose of mouse lymphoma tumors. The researchers reported that 80% of
the mice treated with the vaccine survived, while all of the untreated mice died.

Biosource CEO Robert L. Erwin said the vaccine is produced by taking a gene from the patient's
lymphoma cells and splicing it to a tobacco virus that is then sprayed onto growing plants. Six weeks
later, leaves are harvested from the infected plants and the protein extracted.

Even though the vaccine must be customized for each patient, Erwin believes the privately held
company will be able to keep costs comparable to those for other forms of cancer therapy. The company
hopes to begin testing the safety of the plant-grown vaccine in lymphoma patients this fall.
http://articles.latimes.com/1999/feb/01/business/fi-3688