U.S. NEWS from ASCP

Scientists develop tobacco-based alternative to Gardasil.
The (Louisville) Courier-Journal (7/30, Ungar) reports that researchers are working "to coax from tobacco plants a drug that could be used to prevent cervical cancer in India, where four times as many women get the disease and eight times as many die of it as in the United States." The vaccine, being developed by "the same University of Louisville researchers who helped invent Gardasil...would cost an estimated $3 for three doses, compared with $360 for three doses of Gardasil." Researchers "began their work by identifying a vaccine target: a protein called 'L-2' in the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV). To make the vaccine, they created a synthetic gene that expresses the same protein in plants, then inserted that gene into a tobacco virus, which is used to infect plants and 'grow' the vaccine inexpensively." After six to 10 days, "they began the long process of separating out parts of the tobacco until they are left with pure protein...designed to induce antibodies that protect against at least 13 HPV strains known to cause cervical cancer." Gardasil only "targets two strains that cause 70 percent of cervical cancer cases." The alternative vaccine has "only been tested in five dogs," but researchers hope "to begin the first phase of human clinical trials before the end of 2008."
      The AP (7/30) adds, "Dr. Partha Basu, head of the department of gynecologic oncology at Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute in Calcutta, said 120,000 new cervical cancer cases are detected annually in India," where the new vaccine would be used, "with about 80 percent so advanced they cannot be treated. The problems in India are similar to problems throughout the developing world, where poverty, lack of screening and spotty access to healthcare lead to late diagnoses and early death."