Researchers in Kentucky are trying to turn tobacco from a killer crop into a lifesaving one.
Instead of using the plant for cigarettes, it's being tested as a "factory," to make proteins to make drugs.
It starts with a modified version of the tobacco mosaic virus, which is attached to the tobacco leaves.
Barry Bratcher, the chief operating officer of Kentucky Biosciences, says, "We're able to place a virus into the plant, and we use the plant's machinery to reproduce and replicate that virus with our protein, that we can then harvest and produce."
The proteins can be produced faster on tobacco than with animal tissue.
Right now it's being tested in making flu vaccines,,, an AIDS prevention drug that is now too expensive to make, and, ironically, a drug to treat lung cancer.
Laura Thompson, an intern with the Owensboro Cancer Research program, notes, "Being able to cure cancer with a tobacco plant is pretty crazy, because most of the time, tobacco is well known for causing lung cancer."
