New hope for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) patients will spring from tobacco plants, after Bayer and its subsidiary Icon Genetics announced the development of a new production process that can be used to produce biotech drugs in tobacco plants. NHL is a malignant disorder affecting the lymphatic system. The objective of the new therapy is to activate the patient’s immune system, enabling the malignant cells to be targeted and destroyed by the body’s own defense system. The clinical phase for the biopharmaceutical could start in 2009.

“This project is intended to improve our chances of finding new therapies for life-threatening diseases by using drugs obtained with biotechnological methods,” explained Dr. Wolfgang Plischke, a member of the Board of Management of Bayer AG whose responsibilities include innovation. “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 production of “personalized medicines” using biotechnology processes is an important research area. Proteins produced in tobacco plants can be obtained rapidly and in high yields, and this offers prospects for therapies which have previously been impracticable because of the length of time taken to produce them or their economic viability.

To read more, visit http://www.bayer.com/en/News-Detail.aspx?id=10922.