186 ■ CHAPTER 10 How Genes Work
GENETICS
disorder—grown in the company’s carrot
cells. “This approval demonstrates a proof of
concept for the power of this technology,” the
CEO of Protalix told the journal Nature.
Today, Medicago has completed safety trials
for its pandemic flu vaccine and has had posi-
tive results in the first of two large clinical
trials in humans that tested its seasonal flu
vaccine’s efficacy. When the April manufac-
turing test was completed, the company had
produced an astounding 10 million doses of flu
vaccine in a single month. It would have taken
5–6 months to produce the same amount using
the traditional method of growing vaccines in
chicken eggs. With that success under its belt,
in 2015 the company began building a second
production complex. Based in Quebec City, the
manufacturing facility will have the capacity
to deliver up to 50 million doses of seasonal flu
vaccine.
Medicago is also developing novel vaccines
against rotavirus and rabies virus, and the
company recently received a U.S. government
contract to manufacture antibodies to treat
Ebola virus infection. “It might have taken a
bit longer than we thought for biopharming to
be accepted, but it deserves the visibility and
attraction it has now,” says Vézina. “Biopharm-
ing is here to stay. I’m convinced of this.”break up the leaf material so that the desired
proteins are released into solution. The result-
ing solution, which resembles green-pea soup,
is filtered several times to isolate clusters of
hemagglutinin, which will then be processed
into a vaccine product that is safe to inject into
people.
Medicago is not the first company to produce
a human drug using a plant. The first human-
like enzyme was produced from tobacco back in
1992 at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Numer-
ous other plant biopharming companies have
sprung up since then, experimenting with vari-
ous plant species, including corn, soybean, duck-
weed, and more. But the field is not without risks
and controversy. “The main concern and risk is
spread—that the gene will get out into nature
and spread,” says Roth. “But there are tech-
niques to make sure that doesn’t happen, and it
is closely regulated.”
One of those techniques is to grow the
plants in contained environments, where there
is no risk of contaminating food crops. Israel-
based biotech company Protalix Biotherapeu-
tics, for example, grows carrot cells inside in
large hanging bags of f luid and cells. In May
2012, the FDA approved the first biopharmed
drug for humans (produced by Protalix)—
a therapy for Gaucher disease, a rare genetic