Researchers from the University of Queensland have discovered that Australian tobacco plants can be used as “biofactories” to produce medicines on a large scale. Professor David Craik and Dr. Mark Jackson from the Institute for Molecular Bioscience have found that native wild tobacco, Nicotiana benthamiana, has the potential to produce drugs in large quantities, at a lower cost and in a more sustainable way than traditional manufacturing methods. The study, published in the journal Transgenic Research, is part of a 10-year effort to make growing medicines in plants a reality.
“We are using the natural ability of plants to produce cyclotides—strings of amino acids in a circular shape—which makes them very stable and suitable as oral drugs,” said Professor Craik. “Using modern molecular biology techniques, we can effectively instruct the plant cell to produce the molecule of interest.”
2023-06-01 12:00:04
Link from phys.org