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The cost of pharmaceuticals is rising. For an economically developed country such as Australia, these increasing costs place a growing demand on an already spiralling health expenditure. For a developing country, these costs make many drugs simply unattainable.
Although there is no single, straightforward solution, left-of-field ideas that challenge the typical paradigms of big pharma provide some hope. One such idea comes from David Craik from the University of Queensland and Marilyn Anderson from LaTrobe University.
Recently, Craik and Anderson received the biennial Ramaciotti Biomedical Research Award to develop plants as “biofactories” – essentially genetically reprogramming something biological (such as a plant or microbe) to do industrial-scale grunt work – to produce a class of compounds called cyclotides.
As a long-term goal, this project offers the tantalising possibility that plants containing otherwise unaffordable drugs, such as agents to treat HIV, could be farmed on a small scale at low cost by communities that need them most. Active drugs could be obtained by a process as simple as making tea.
Related on the SLP
Cyclotides are a class of mini proteins obtained from certain species of plants.
Their scientific discovery was serendipitous – a Red Cross relief worker in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1960s noticed that women of the region used a tea made from the leaves of Oldenlandia affinis to induce labour.
Read full, original post: Little farmer, big pharma: the quest to modify plants to ‘grow’ medicines
