Plants 'Hijacked' To Make Polio Vaccine (bbc.com) 59
Plants have been "hijacked" to make polio vaccine in a breakthrough with the potential to transform vaccine manufacture, say scientists. From a report: The team at the John Innes Centre, in Norfolk, says the process is cheap, easy and quick. As well as helping eliminate polio, the scientists believe their approach could help the world react to unexpected threats such as Zika virus or Ebola. Experts said the achievement was both impressive and important. The vaccine is an "authentic mimic" of poliovirus called a virus-like particle. Outwardly it looks almost identical to poliovirus but -- like the difference between a mannequin and person -- it is empty on the inside.
It has all the features needed to train the immune system, but none of the weapons to cause an infection.
INtriguing, and I wonder about Flu (Score:5, Interesting)
I assume they have tested this but to be a good antigen often you need to also have the proper decoration of the particle with lipids and sugars. I would doubt that plants could provide the right version of these for animal antigens. But it's possible this shows it's not neccessary or they have a way around it in the case of polio.
Even more intriguing is the potential for a flu vaccine. What makes that intriguing is that flu vaccine is often raised in eggs. And birds (hence eggs) are the natural resevoir of flu. So there's some risks associated with the use of the native host as the agent for growing the intentionally harmelss vaccine. And there might even be some selectivity on the animals part for things that are more bird adapted than others. With plants one presumably avoids that and the risk of a human catching a plant virus seem negligible.
Re:INtriguing, and I wonder about Flu (Score:5, Interesting)
With plants one presumably avoids that and the risk of a human catching a plant virus seem negligible.
It's rare, but not unheard of that viruses jump entire kingdoms. A tobacco ringspot virus jumped to bees, for example.
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I assume they have tested this but ...
You can stop there. From the article "The virus-like particles prevented polio in animal experiments". So, not tested in humans yet (understandably) but, yes, tested. Additional upsides, beyond time and cost, are that this eliminates the risk of vaccine derived polio.
Even more intriguing is the potential for a flu vaccine. What makes that intriguing is that flu vaccine is often raised in eggs.
And not just flu vaccines. Vaccines against any viral threat. This is a game changing technology!
Original press release? (Score:5, Informative)
I think this might be it:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub... [eurekalert.org]
The breakthrough we've been waiting for (Score:5, Informative)
If this proves to be generally applicable, it will be a fast way of making a vaccine against whatever new disease strain may happen to break out. No more guesswork over which viral strains to include in this year's flu vaccine.
And because it's a vaccine made by genetically modifying a plant, deploying it will automatically eliminate Luddites from the population. Scientific progress will become possible again, even in Europe and California. I think GMO labeling is a rotten idea, but just this once, let's put a big red USES THE GMO PROCESS label in each vial to make sure.
Re:The breakthrough we've been waiting for (Score:5, Funny)
And because it's a vaccine made by genetically modifying a plant, deploying it will automatically eliminate Luddites from the population. Scientific progress will become possible again, even in Europe and California. I think GMO labeling is a rotten idea, but just this once, let's put a big red USES THE GMO PROCESS label in each vial to make sure.
Yeah, but it's still Vegan friendly. Can we find a way to do this with cows instead?
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Yeah, but it's still Vegan friendly. Can we find a way to do this with cows instead?
All of the GMO products that the flat-earth lobby is so concerned about are simple plant modifications. We haven't even exposed them to advanced CRISPR magic animal products yet.
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There are GMO salmon. There are also GMO fluorescent tropical fish [glofish.com] available at my local Petco.
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Yes, I forgot about the salmon (which are delicious, by the way). The glowing fish are not a food.
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There are lots of press releases hyping breakthroughs that are anything but. However, this looks like it might very well be the real thing.
oh sweet irony! (Score:3)
Now if only we could convince idiots to let doctors inoculate their children.
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We must ban it NOW.
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But but but....this could turn our kids into Vegetables....
Don't be absurd! That's what the chem-trails are for. ;)
Why a plant? (Score:2)
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No they are not.
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Well for starters, you never know exactly how a given technological process might be used in the future.
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I assume that a plant can produce more complex biological structures than a bacteria.
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Viruses have traditionally been incubated by using the live virus in living creatures, allowing them to reproduce, and harvesting living samples. That meant keeping live, reproducing copies of the virus around, where they are fully capable of reproducing and even of mutating to a more dangerous form. By not actually creating a full virus that can reproduce, and never having to handle the full organism, it makes vaccine creation _far_ safer and cheaper.
Why the polio vaccine? (Score:1)
Of all the vaccines to do this with, why polio?
We have darn near eradicated this surge from the face of the earth, in fact 1 of the three strains actually HAS been eradicated so far and one strain is nearly so. The infection rate for polio is down to double digits world wide, in fact we are seeing almost as many oral vaccine caused cases of polio than actual cases. If we can sustain the vaccination rates for just a bit longer and get the last few pockets of unvaccinated people taken care of, this could a
Re:Why the polio vaccine? (Score:4, Insightful)
Much the same as how there are many proofs for the Pythagorean theorem. The more ways to the correct answer, the more thoroughly the problem is solved, and the understanding gained developing those proofs lends itself to being able to solve other more complex problems.
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My guess is because the original Polio vaccine was given away to the world with no patents. When this new means of developing the Polio vaccine becomes ready to go into full production, whichever pharmaceutical company working on it can then lock it down and fund measures to eradicate the original vaccine that only saves lives, but does not produce huge revenues.
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Polio would be a really bad germ warfare candidate. It mostly affects children. It is symptomatic in only about one case in 200. It uses fecal/oral transmission route, which makes it much harder to infect people with a weapon compared to an airborne disease.
You seem to be saying that having a disease in germ warfare labs *and* in the wild is somehow better than having it only in germ warfare labs.
Polio eradication progress (Score:5, Informative)
I've been following the polio numbers week by week for some years now. (Polio eradication will be one of the great achievements of human history.)
This news is particularly important because this year for the first time ever "circulating vaccine derived polio virus" (cVDPV, where live weakened polio in vaccines has mutated back to virulence) is causing more polio cases than wild polio virus (WPV).
Here are the full-year numbers for the last few years:
WPV cVDPV
2011 583 67
2012 202 68
2013 416 65
2014 359 56
2015 74 32
2016 37 5
(2017 missing because the year hasn't yet finished.) Here are the numbers for start of year to approx 9 August:
WPV cVDPV
2014 138 31
2015 29 10
2016 19 3
2017 8 37
(I only have 2014 onwards ready to hand in week-by-week breakdown.) Mostly this is due to a major outbreak of cVDPV in Syria (30 cases).
(There is a delay of up to about 2 months between a polio case in the field and it getting reported to central authorities and added to the official numbers, but the numbers above are all what was reported at that time of year, so the comparison is fair.)
It is looking reasonable to hope that the last ever WPV case will be this year or next year, but cVDPV eradication is looking harder. Polio is a disease that can lurk asymptomatically in a population, so it will be three years after the last detection of WPV before it is declared eradicated. (Nigeria had over two years of being apparently polio free before a few cases re-emerged.)
There were three strains of WPV. WPV2 and WPV3 have been eradicated, but until recently vaccines were still vaccinating against WPV2, and it is this vaccine strain (cVDPV2) which is causing most of the problems (all of the cVDPV cases so far this year are cVDPV2.) Now WPV2 vaccine is not in the standard vaccinations, and is only used in response to a cVDPV2 outbreak.
The countries still with WPV endemic are Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Nigeria has had cases recently enough that we can't safely say it is free of WPV.
The countries which have had cVDPV cases in 2015 or later are Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Madagascar, Lao, Guinea, Ukraine, Myanmar, Nigeria.
Find more at
http://polioeradication.org/po... [polioeradication.org]
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No, your interpretation is entirely wrong.
cVDPV cases this year are in line with what we've had for the last decade. It is just that WPV cases are plummeting, so where cVDPV used to be a small percentage of cases, now it is a large percentage. Futhermore, most of the cases are in Syria, where civil war has created an environment conducive to outbreaks, which is not the fault of the vaccine.
Although the vaccine is causing damage, it is preventing much more. In 1980 there were about 400,000 cases per year wor
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It's no longer a technical problem to eradicate polio. It's a political one. There was a very strong effort to eradicate it which failed in 2006, because of rumors that the vaccine was actually a sterilization agent. Unfortunately, the fear was not entirely unjustified. There *have* been fraudulent vaccines used to force birth control on women in the middle east, so it was not an unthinkable rumor for people in a poor and information poor place like Nigeria. The fact that fake vaccines were used by a count
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In this case it is a non-individual risk. Getting vaccinated makes you less likely to get cVDPV, but makes it (very slightly) more likely that people around you will get cVDPV.
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I, too, read the title to mean 'plant' as in 'a manufacturing facility' not as in 'greed things with leaves'. And was all "how do you do that and what about the stuff the plant was supposed to be making?"
But, yes, green plants are better at folding some protiens than some mamilian cell lines are. Though I thought this was old news. I remember it being discussed a while back when I got into Folding@Home.
Bird Flu? (Score:1)
From the article [bbc.com]:
Prof Lomonossoff told the BBC: "In an experiment with a Canadian company, they showed you could actually identify a new strain of virus and produce a candidate vaccine in three to four weeks.
Suppose the bird flu mutated, so that it spread easily between humans. Would making "a candidate vaccine in three to four weeks" be fast enough to prevent a disastrous pandemic?
Think of the plants! (Score:1)
Will this create a generation of autistic plants? Is this why my ficus ignores me?
Plantdemic (Score:2)
Outwardly it looks almost identical to poliovirus but -- like the difference between a mannequin and person -- it is empty on the inside. It has all the features needed to train the immune system, but none of the weapons to cause an infection.
That's just what the plants WANT us to think. Today it's a vaccine, tomorrow it's a plant-borne pandemic. The Happening was a warning, people!
Mannequin? (Score:2)
I am a mannequin, you insensitive clod!
Let's hope (Score:2)
Taking a break from their normal work... (Score:1)
As anyone who studied at UEA knows the real work of the John Innes centre is triffid research.
This is Slashdot at its best! (Score:1)
Am only looking at 'outstanding' answers but good mix of experts providing informed answers.
Just wish there was upvoted facility here.
Next up... (Score:2)