3 ms·

DARPA thinks it's a scalable method, at least for producing flu vaccines: "Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals (AMP), companies in four states are build

by rch 12y ago

DARPA thinks it's a scalable method, at least for producing flu vaccines: "Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals (AMP), companies in four states are building facilities where they can quickly produce vaccine-grade proteins grown in the cells of tobacco plants. Once they produce the proteins, the goal is for each company to scale up its process to produce 100 million doses of H1N1 flu vaccine per month." http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=61520 http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=61520

state 12y ago
Right. It certainly seems like a much more scalable way to produce antibodies. It's just getting all the infrastructure in place that's going to be a challenge.
- rch 12y ago
  That article was from 2010. I hear this place is pretty impressive: http://nctm.tamu.edu/facilities.html http://nctm.tamu.edu/facilities.html
- dnautics 12y ago
  It's actually not very scaleable. The yield is incredibly low. Processing plants is also difficult because you have to deal with a bunch of stupid stuff like tough cell walls, etc. I'm not even sure that the glycosylation patterns that tobacco puts on the antibodies are human-compatible (i.e. problems could occur if you try to use tobacco-derived antibody therapeutics in a patient more than once). The choice to use tobacco was very likely a symptom of "if you have a hammer," common in biology and chemistry, where some tobacco researcher (tobacco is a well-studied model organism) wrote a convincing grant with a handful of accurate but marginal improvements over contemporary systems (in this case glycosylated vs. unglycosylated) that would enable commercialization, and downplayed some of the setbacks (low yield). Meanwhile other technical approaches have matured that are really good at tackling those problems but without the other setbacks... but just weren't awarded seed money.
dnautics 12y ago
DARPA is misinformed about a lot of things and has the money to afford being so especially if a few long shots work out. Tobacco is not scaleable for rapid response because of the amount of time it takes to verify and grow a plant clone. The goal with pandemic flu is to get a rapid response vaccine kit for first responders, then to stage in higher-scaled vaccines. [1] Ebola is similar. Unfortunately ZMAPP has this technical debt where their testing and validation is tied (understandable from a scientific and legalistic viewpoint but maybe not necessary the best outcome) to production in tobacco. There are better systems now, I'm thinking the new system called 'pichia glycoswitch'. [1]http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/5/185/185ra68.short http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/5/185/185ra68.short Disclaimer: i used to work for the VI and witnessed the researcher D. Gibson come in after the 'timed experiment', where he had a special fedex truck come in at 3am to pick up the package from his private residence; he joked that his neighbors must have thought he was dealing drugs. Although I generally dislike the scientific product coming out of the VI, this was one I had immense respect for.

by rch 12y ago

state 12y ago

Right. It certainly seems like a much more scalable way to produce antibodies. It's just getting all the infrastructure in place that's going to be a challenge.

rch 12y ago
That article was from 2010. I hear this place is pretty impressive: http://nctm.tamu.edu/facilities.html http://nctm.tamu.edu/facilities.html
dnautics 12y ago
It's actually not very scaleable. The yield is incredibly low. Processing plants is also difficult because you have to deal with a bunch of stupid stuff like tough cell walls, etc. I'm not even sure that the glycosylation patterns that tobacco puts on the antibodies are human-compatible (i.e. problems could occur if you try to use tobacco-derived antibody therapeutics in a patient more than once). The choice to use tobacco was very likely a symptom of "if you have a hammer," common in biology and chemistry, where some tobacco researcher (tobacco is a well-studied model organism) wrote a convincing grant with a handful of accurate but marginal improvements over contemporary systems (in this case glycosylated vs. unglycosylated) that would enable commercialization, and downplayed some of the setbacks (low yield). Meanwhile other technical approaches have matured that are really good at tackling those problems but without the other setbacks... but just weren't awarded seed money.

dnautics 12y ago

DARPA is misinformed about a lot of things and has the money to afford being so especially if a few long shots work out. Tobacco is not scaleable for rapid response because of the amount of time it takes to verify and grow a plant clone. The goal with pandemic flu is to get a rapid response vaccine kit for first responders, then to stage in higher-scaled vaccines. [1] Ebola is similar. Unfortunately ZMAPP has this technical debt where their testing and validation is tied (understandable from a scientific and legalistic viewpoint but maybe not necessary the best outcome) to production in tobacco. There are better systems now, I'm thinking the new system called 'pichia glycoswitch'. [1]http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/5/185/185ra68.short http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/5/185/185ra68.short Disclaimer: i used to work for the VI and witnessed the researcher D. Gibson come in after the 'timed experiment', where he had a special fedex truck come in at 3am to pick up the package from his private residence; he joked that his neighbors must have thought he was dealing drugs. Although I generally dislike the scientific product coming out of the VI, this was one I had immense respect for.