Bayer Advances Protein Production from Tobacco Plants

Leverkusen, Germany (June 16)-Bayer and its subsidiary Icon Genetics (Halle, Germany) have developed a process to produce therapeutic proteins from tobacco plants. The companies opened a new pilot plant for producing clinical-trial materials based on the process in Halle earlier this month. The moves support Bayer’s strategy of innovation in personalized medicines.

“This project is intended to improve our chances of finding new therapies for life-threatening diseases by using drugs obtained with biotechnological methods,” said Wolfgang Plischke, a member of Bayer’s board of management in a prepared statement. “Not all cancers are the same. There are many types of tumor disease, which have to be treated individually with specific active substances. The objective is to use this process to produce an individual drug for each patient.”

The first protein produced in the pilot plant will be a patient-specific antibody vaccine for treating non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Phase I clinical testing is scheduled to begin in 2009.

Bayer outlined its approach for the production process in a company press release. Before the tobacco plant can start producing an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), the blueprint for the relevant drug product has to be transported into the plant with the aid of agrobacteria. The plant is placed headfirst in a bath containing a bacterial solution specific to the plant. A vacuum process enables the plant to take up the bacterial solution through its pores. The solution is distributed throughout the tobacco plant and its genetic information passes into the plant’s cells. The plant then uses the blueprint introduced in this way to produce the API.

Twenty-six people are employed at Icon Genetics’s biocenter in Halle for the research and development of biotech active ingredients produced in plants. The new pilot plant creates 11 new positions. Bayer acquired Icon Genetics, a developer of plant-engineering technologies, in 2006. Since then, Bayer has invested EUR 10 million ($15.6 million) in the Halle site.