Plants make vaccine for treating type of cancer in Stanford study

July 22, 2008

STANFORD, Calif. - Plants could act as safe, speedy factories for growing antibodies for personalized treatments against a common form of cancer, according to new findings from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The findings came in the first human tests of an injectable vaccine grown in genetically engineered plants.

The treatments, which would vaccinate cancer patients against their malignant cells, could lead to earlier personalized therapy to tackle follicular B-cell lymphoma, an immune-system malignancy diagnosed in about 16,000 people each year.

Doctors regard follicular B-cell lymphoma as a chronic, incurable disease. The standard treatment, chemotherapy, has such severe side effects that patients often opt for watchful waiting in the early stages of illness. However, plant-grown vaccines, which lack side effects, could allow earlier, more aggressive management of the cancer.

"This would be a way to treat cancer without side effects," said Ronald Levy, MD, professor of oncology and the Robert K. and Helen K. Summy Professor in the School of Medicine, who is the study's senior author. "The idea is to marshal the body's own immune system to fight cancer."

The findings will appear July 21 in the advance online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was a phase-1 trial that showed plant-grown cancer vaccines were safe for patients and could be produced quickly and cheaply. Sixteen newly diagnosed lymphoma patients received the treatment; none experienced any side effects from plant-grown vaccines.

Future studies will test the vaccine's effectiveness.

The cancer vaccines rely on a biological quirk of follicular B-cell lymphoma, which is a type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The cancer starts when a single immune cell multiplies uncontrollably, producing many identical clones of itself. The clones all carry the same antibody on their exterior, a marker that is unique to the cancer and is not found on any of the body's healthy cells. Levy's vaccination strategy is to inject many copies of the cancer-specific antibody into a newly diagnosed lymphoma patient, stimulating the patient's immune system to seek and destroy malignant cells.

Previous trials of this kind of vaccine, produced in animal cells and tested in mice and humans, have had mixed success, and the vaccines are not yet commercially available. Growing cancer vaccines in plants could circumvent some of the hurdles to turning the concept into a real treatment, Levy said.

Because each person's cancer antibody is unique, every patient needs a personalized vaccine. Growing personalized vaccines in animal cells takes months, costs thousands of dollars per patient and comes with the theoretical risk that a patient might inadvertently be infected with an animal virus that contaminated the cells used to grow the vaccine. Personalized vaccines could also be produced with genetically engineered bacteria, but bacteria-grown vaccines aren't ideal, either.

"The plant system has some advantages," said Levy, who is also a member of the Stanford Cancer Center and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

The researchers chose tobacco plants that were genetically engineered to reproduce quantities of the vaccine. To make a tobacco plant churn out a human antibody, scientists isolate the antibody from the patient's tumor and put the antibody gene into a modified version of the tobacco mosaic virus. They infect a tobacco plant with the gene-carrying virus by scratching the virus on its leaves. The virus takes the gene into the plant's cells, which then churn out lots of antibody. After a few days, technicians snip off the plant's leaves, grind them up and purify the antibody. Only a few plants are needed to make enough vaccine for each patient.

"The new manufacturing system allows very rapid production of a vaccine," said Charles Arntzen, PhD, a professor of plant biology at the Arizona Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, who was not involved in the research. "I think without the speed, it would be hard to convince a cancer patient to wait for a vaccine to be developed, rather than going on some other therapy."

"It's pretty cool technology," Levy said. "And it's really ironic that you would make a treatment for cancer out of tobacco. That appealed to me." None of the harmful chemicals found in cigarettes end up in the purified vaccines.

Not only is the technology fast, cheap and safe, but Levy said there's reason to expect that the plant-grown antibodies will generate a stronger immune response than those made in animal cells. Both plant and animal cells attach sugars to antibodies and other proteins during biochemical processing, but the plant and animal sugars are different. The difference might prompt a more robust immune response to plant-grown antibodies, Levy said.

The next research step is a phase-2 clinical trial to test the effectiveness of plant-grown vaccines in a larger group of lymphoma patients, Levy said. He's optimistic, adding, "We know that if you get the immune system revved up, it can attack and kill cancer."

Stanford University Medical Center

---

---

	The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child (Sears Parenting Library) by Robert W. Sears (Author) THE VACCINE BOOK offers parents a fair, impartial, fact-based resource from the most trusted name in pediatrics. Dr. Bob devotes each chapter in the book to a disease/vaccine pair and offers a comprehensive discussion of what the disease is, how common or rare it is, how serious or harmless it is, the ingredients of the vaccine, and any possible side effects from the vaccine. This completely revised edition offers · updated information on each vaccine and disease · more detail on vaccines' side effects · expanded discussions of combination vaccines · a new section on adult vaccines · additional options for alternative vaccine schedules · a guide to Canadian vaccinations THE VACCINE BOOK provides exactly the...
	Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health, and Our Children by Louise Kuo Habakus MA (Editor), Mary Holland (Editor) The book the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want you to read!National polls show that Americans are increasingly concerned about vaccine safety and the right to make individual, informed choices together with their healthcare practitioners. Vaccine Epidemic focuses on the searing debate surrounding individual and parental vaccination choice in the United States. Featuring more than twenty experts from the fields of ethics, law, science, medicine, business, and history, Vaccine Epidemic urgently calls for reform. It is the essential handbook for the vaccination choice movement and required reading for all people contemplating vaccination for themselves and their children. Louise Kuo Habakus and Mary Holland edit and introduce a diverse array of interrelated topics concerning the explosive...
	Vaccine Nation by David Lender (Author) Dani North is a filmmaker who just won at the Tribeca Film Festival for her documentary, The Drugging of Our Children, a film critical of the pharmaceutical industry. When she is handed "whistleblower" evidence about the U.S. vaccination program, she has to keep herself alive long enough to expose it before a megalomaniacal pharmaceutical company CEO can have her killed. Excerpts from Trojan Horse, The Gravy Train and Bull Street, David Lender's other thrillers, follow the text of Vaccine Nation.
	Make an Informed Vaccine Decision for the Health of Your Child: A Parent's Guide to Childhood Shots by Mayer Eisenstein (Author) The current schedule of recommended vaccines is so crowded that doctors give babies several shots during a single office visit -- up to eight vaccines all at one time. Parents -- and doctors -- often forget that vaccines are drugs. How often do we, as adults, take that many drugs at the same time? Would we be more surprised if we did or did not have an adverse reaction?Dr. Mayer Eisenstein has practiced medicine, delivered babies, and provided families with preventive healthcare services for over 35 years. This honest guide to childhood shots was written especially for concerned parents. With Dr. Eisenstein's help, it is now possible to make informed vaccine decisions.In this book you will learn...* The prevalence and seriousness of each disease, including who is most at risk.* How each...
	Vaccine Safety Manual for Concerned Families and Health Practitioners, 2nd Edition: Guide to Immunization Risks and Protection by Neil Z. Miller (Author), Russell Blaylock (Foreword) The Vaccine Safety Manual (new, updated 2012 edition) is the world's most complete guide to immunization risks and protection. It includes pertinent information on every major vaccine: polio, tetanus, MMR, hepatitis A, B, HPV (cervical cancer), Hib, Flu, chickenpox, shingles, rotavirus, pneumococcal, meningococcal, RSV, DTaP, anthrax, smallpox, TB, and more. All of the information, including detailed vaccine safety and efficacy data, is written in an easy-to-understand format, yet includes more than 1,000 scientific citations. More than 100 charts, tables, graphs and illustrations supplement the text. This encyclopedic health manual is an important addition to every family's home library and will be referred to again and again.
	Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver by Arthur Allen (Author) A fascinating account of vaccination's miraculous, inflammatory past and its uncertain future. In 1796, as smallpox ravaged Europe, Edward Jenner injected a child with a benign version of the disease, then exposed the child to the deadly virus itself. The boy proved resistant to smallpox, and Jenner's risky experiment produced the earliest vaccination. In this deftly written account, journalist Arthur Allen reveals a history of vaccination that is both illuminated with hope and shrouded by controversy—from Jenner's discovery to Pasteur's vaccines for rabies and cholera, to those that safeguarded the children of the twentieth century, and finally to the tumult currently surrounding vaccination. Faced with threats from anthrax to AIDS, we are a vulnerable population and can...
	Vaccine Illusion Due to the growing number of vaccine safety concerns, our society has been polarized into vaccine advocates and vaccine opponents. However, in the debate over vaccine safety, we have lost sight of a bigger problem: how the use of vaccines eliminates our chance to achieve disease prevention naturally. Written by an immunologist, Vaccine Illusion explains why vaccines cannot give us lasting immunity to infectious diseases and how they jeopardize our natural immunity and overall health. Vaccine Illusion offers a roadmap to the non-vaccination approach to health and disease prevention.
	Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All by Paul A. Offit (Author) There's a silent, dangerous war going on out there. On one side are parents, bombarded with stories about the dangers of vaccines, now wary of immunizing their sons and daughters. On the other side are doctors, scared to send kids out of their offices vulnerable to illnesses like whooping cough and measles--the diseases of their grandparents.How did anyone come to view vaccines with horror? The answer is rooted in one of the most powerful citizen activist movements in our nation's history. In Deadly Choices, infectious disease expert Paul Offit relates the shocking story of anti-vaccine America--its origins, leaders, influences, and impact. Offering strategies to keep us from returning to an era when children routinely died from infections, Deadly Choices is a vigorous and definitive...
	Raising A Vaccine Free Child by Wendy Lydall (Author) This book provides parents with a comprehensive, scientifically based guide to the facts, myths, problems and solutions associated with raising a vaccine free child. It helps them protect their children both from the wiles of the vaccine industry and from harmful germs. It explains the difference between childhood diseases and the other infectious diseases, which is the key to understanding immunisation. The book provides an insight into the workings of the vaccine industry, and into the role of the media in perpetuating myths about vaccination and infectious diseases. There is a detailed chapter on "herd immunity" which empowers parents to withstand the accusation that their vaccine free children pose a threat to others. It also helps parents cope with aggression from individuals...
	Vaccine-nation: Poisoning the Population, One Shot at a Time by Andreas Moritz (Author) Author of a dozen books, including the bestselling Timeless Secrets of Rejuvenation and Health and Cancer is Not a Disease, Andreas Moritz takes on yet another controversial subject, this time to expose the Vaccine Myth. In Vaccine-nation, Moritz unravels the mother of all vaccine lies - that vaccines are safe and they prevent disease. Furthermore, he reveals undeniable scientific proof that vaccines are actually implicated in most common diseases today. This book reveals: • Statistical evidence that vaccines never actually eradicated infectious diseases, including polio. • How childhood vaccines, flu shots and other kinds of inoculations systemically destroy the body's immune system. • The massive increase of allergies, Eczema, Arthritis, Asthma, Autism, Acid reflux, Cancer,...