Japanese Researchers Develop Rice-Based Vaccine for Cholera

Scientists at the University of Tokyo have developed a genetically modified strain of rice that expresses a vaccine for cholera. The Japanese researchers created the rice-based cholera vaccine by inserting the genetic material from the cholera bacterium into the genome of the rice plant. The researchers used two types of rice plants to generate the vaccine: Kitaake, which produces normal rice, and Hosetsu, which produces dwarf-type rice.

Cholera is a bacterial disease that affects the intestinal tract. It is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae and is transmitted to humans through contaminated food and water. The advantages of a rice-based vaccine against cholera are the safety in administering the vaccine, and the lower cost of production. It represents an improvement on most traditional plant-based oral vaccines because the rice can be stored at room temperature for at least a year and a half and can remain effective. In addition, purification of the vaccine antigen from rice seed is not necessary, resulting in reduced costs. Rice also has greater protein content than some of the starch-based edible vaccines currently under experimentation for a variety of infectious diseases.

Read the article at http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/18876/.