Promising microbicide can be produced by plants

Fields of genetically modified tobacco could produce large quantities of microbicide
Flickr/perrykm5
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Scientists have developed an anti-HIV microbicide that can be mass-produced in plants — in quantities large enough to make it affordable for people in developing countries, they say.
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The microbicide, which has been found to prevent HIV transmission in cells, is a combination of two promising microbicide compounds — monoclonal antibody b12 and the protein cyanovirin-N.
Together the compounds are "more potent at neutralising HIV than its single components", Amy Sexton, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia, told SciDev.Net.
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The researchers also showed that the microbicide can be mass-produced by transferring the gene constructed for the microbicide into tobacco plant cells.
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"This way the plant expresses the gene and produces the microbicide in the same way it produces its own proteins," says Sexton.
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Scaling-up production simply requires growing acres of the plants from genetically modified seeds, she adds.
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Microbicide gels and creams are a great hope for female-initiated protection from HIV/AIDS but so far trials have had mixed results
(see Drugs may be the next frontier for HIV prevention and
Anti-HIV gel fails to prevent infection).
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In February this year, research suggested that the anti-HIV gel PRO 2000 might protect against infection
(see Microbicide hope at last, say researchers)
but the results were not completely certain.
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The results of a larger PRO 2000 study are due in December 2009.
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"The success of microbicides depends not only on the identification of a broad-acting effective product, but also on the issue of cheap and easy production at a huge scale for global availability.
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We have demonstrated the potential for overcoming both of these hurdles," says Sexton.
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But Morad Ahmed Morad, a professor of medicine at Tanta University, Egypt, is more cautious, saying that potential health issues such as allergic reaction to a plant-produced microbicidal cream and environmental concerns about the spread of the inserted gene to other plants need to be considered.
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He adds that developing countries may not be able to produce such a microbicide themselves because its production will be controlled by patents.
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The research was published online in The FASEB Journal.

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Link to abstract in The FASEB Journal

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Wagdy Sawahel
SciDev