Tomato: Potential Carrier of Alzheimer's Vaccine?

Filed in archive Food and Agriculture , Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics on July 9, 2008

© Manjith Kainickara


Korean research has come up with the potential of tomato as carrier of an edible vaccine against Alzheimer's disease.

Kim and colleagues' aim was to develop a plant-derived vaccine against Alzheimer's disease, since beta-amyloid is toxic to animal cells. Tomatoes are an attractive candidate as a vaccine carrier because they can be eaten without heat treatment, which reduces the risk of destroying the immune stimulation potential of the foreign protein. The researchers inserted the beta-amyloid gene into the tomato genome and measured the immune responses to the tomato-derived toxic protein in a group of 15-month-old mice.

They immunized the mice orally with the transgenic tomato plants once a week for three weeks, and also gave the mice a booster seven weeks after the first tomato feed. Blood analyses showed a strong immune response after the booster, with the production of antibodies to the human foreign protein.

Still on initial stages, but interestingly promising line of research. We definitely would like to know how this one goes.