Space Travel News  
EPIDEMICS
Tobacco plants engineered to manufacture high yields of malaria drug
by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 24, 2016


This photograph depicts the engineering of malaria drug artemisinin into a tobacco plant. Image courtesy Malhotra et al. For a larger version of this image please go here.

In 2015, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in part for the discovery of artemisinin, a plant-derived compound that's proven to be a lifesaver in treating malaria. Yet many people who need the drug are not able to access it, in part because it's difficult to grow the plant that is the compound's source.

Now, research has shown that tobacco plants can be engineered to manufacture the drug at therapeutic levels. The study appears October 20 in Molecular Plant.

"Artemisinin treats malaria faster than any other drug. It can clear the pathogen from the bloodstream within 48 hours," says senior author Shashi Kumar, of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in New Delhi, India. "Our research is focused on finding a way to make this drug available to more people."

Malaria infects more than 200 million people every year, according to the World Health Organization, and kills more than 400,000, mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia. The majority of those who live in malaria-stricken areas cannot afford to buy artemisinin.

The drug's high cost is due to the extraction process and largely to the fact that it's difficult to grow Artemisia annua (sweet wormword), the plant that is the original source of the drug, in climates where malaria is common, such as in India. Advances in synthetic biology have made it possible to produce the drug in yeast, but the manufacturing process is difficult to scale up.

Earlier studies looked at growing the compound in tobacco--a plant that's relatively easy to genetically manipulate and that grows well in areas where malaria is endemic. But yields of artemisinin from those plants were low.

In the current paper, Kumar's team reports using a dual-transformation approach to boost the production of artemisinin in the tobacco plants: they first generated plants that contained transgenic chloroplasts, and the same plants were then manipulated again to insert genes into the nuclear genome as well.

"We rationalized the expression of biosynthetic pathway's gene in different compartment that enabled us to reach the maximum yield from the double transgenic plants," he says.

Extract from the plants was shown to stop the growth progression of pathogen-infected red blood cells in vitro. Whole cells from the plant were also fed to mice infected with Plasmodium berghei, one of the microbes that causes malaria.

The plant product greatly reduced the level of the parasite in the blood. In fact, the researchers found, the whole plant material was more effective in attacking the parasite than pure artemisinin, likely because encapsulation inside the plant cells protected the compound from degradation by digestive enzymes.

But Kumar and his colleagues acknowledge that convincing people to eat tobacco plants is likely to be a hard sell. For that reason, he is collaborating with Henry Daniell, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the study's coauthors, with a plan to genetically engineer lettuce plants for producing artemisinin. The lettuce containing the drug can then be freeze dried, ground into a powder, and put into capsules for cost-effective delivery.

"Plant and animal science are increasingly coming together," Kumar says. "In the near future, you will see more drugs produced inside plants will be commercialized to reduce the drug cost."

Research paper: "Compartmentalized metabolic engineering for artemisinin biosynthesis and effective malaria treatment by oral delivery of plant cells."


Thanks for being here;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once


credit card or paypal
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5 Billed Monthly


paypal only


.


Related Links
Cell Press
Epidemics on Earth - Bird Flu, HIV/AIDS, Ebola






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle

Previous Report
EPIDEMICS
Indian capital's zoo closes over bird flu scare
New Delhi (AFP) Oct 19, 2016
New Delhi zoo has temporarily closed after two birds died of bird flu, its curator said Wednesday, a month after India declared itself free of the disease. Riaz Khan said tests had confirmed the birds died of the H5 strain of avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu. "We have shut the zoo down only for two to four days to conduct tests and monitor the situation to see it does not spr ... read more


EPIDEMICS
Ariane 5 ready for first Galileo payload

ILS Announces Two Missions under Its EUTELSAT Multi-Launch Agreement

More commercial spaceports going ahead

Orbital ATK and Stratolaunch partner to offer competitive launch opportunities

EPIDEMICS
Anxious wait for news of Mars lander's fate

Robot explorers headed for Mars quest: ESA

Ready for the Red Planet

ESA lander starts 3-day descent to Mars; Telemetry all good

EPIDEMICS
Hunter's Supermoon to light up Saturday night sky

Small Impacts Are Reworking Lunar Soil Faster Than Scientists Thought

A facelift for the Moon every 81,000 years

Exploration Team Shoots for the Moon with Water-Propelled Satellite

EPIDEMICS
Shedding light on Pluto's glaciers

Chandra detects low-energy X-rays from Pluto

Scientists discover what extraordinary compounds may be hidden inside Jupiter and Neptune

New Horizons Spies a Kuiper Belt Companion

EPIDEMICS
Proxima Centauri might be more sunlike than we thought

Stars with Three Planet-Forming Discs of Gas

TESS will provide exoplanet targets for years to come

The death of a planet nursery?

EPIDEMICS
Rocket scientists reach for the sky

Aerojet Rocketdyne motor plays key role in Blue Origin crew escape test

Successful escape, landing for Blue Origin's rocket

Welding on massive fuel tank for first flight of SLS completed

EPIDEMICS
China to launch manned spacecraft: Xinhua

Closing windows on Shenzhou 11

China to launch world's first X-ray pulsar navigation satellite

China may be only country with space station in 2024

EPIDEMICS
Study suggests comet strike's link to age-old warming event

Kepler Gets the 'Big Picture' of Comet 67P

Origin of minor planets' rings revealed

Rosetta's comet adventure in numbers









The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.