DowAgroSciences, traditionally involved in pesticide manufacture, has received Department of Agriculture approval to make a vaccine against Newcastle disease, which can infect poultry, in genetically engineered non-nicotine-producing tobacco plants.

The Dow AgroSciences Concert™ Plant-Cell-Produced System represents a new category of plant-made vaccines. This leading edge technology utilizes plant cells instead of whole plants in a secure, bio-contained environment to produce vaccines. Because of this bio-contained production system, concerns and challenges associated with making vaccines in whole plants or food crops are eliminated.

By 2009, Dow AgroSciences hopes to have vaccines for equine West Nile virus and avian flu, with other vaccines likely to follow.

Vaccine production in genetically engineered plants, or "molecular farming", could become the next trend in vaccine manufacturing. It is perceived to be safe, low-cost and more efficient.

Although DowAgro claims to have received the world's first regulatory approval for a plant-made vaccine from the USDA, there have been other recent successes in producing vaccines against the plague and anthrax, also in tobacco cells.

Source: DowAgro