Can Tobacco Be A Cancer Cure?
Scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine recently published their findings which indicated that there is a potential for some curative properties in tobacco to be used in fighting some forms of lymphoma. The irony was not lost on the scientists who thought it was cool to use a cancer-causing product to cure a cancer.
After isolating the patient's cancer cells, the antibody-producing gene is extracted and transplanted to the "tobacco mosaic virus," which is then used to infect the tobacco plants. The infection then spreads through the cells and the gene produces large quantities of antibodies. After only a few days, the researchers ground up some of the leaves and extract the antibodies necessary.
Only a few tobacco plants are needed to produce enough vaccine for one patient. It was a small test, 16 patients. However, 70 percent had an immune response and 45 percent had the response that researchers were looking for.
Scientists are excited about the possibilities of being able to produce a vaccine quickly and inexpensively. Sixteen thousand people each year are diagnosed with this type of lymphoma, follicular B-cell lymphoma. Treatment is usually constant monitoring and hoping that chemotherapy can be avoided.
"This would be a way to treat cancer without side effects. The idea is to marshal the body's immune system to fight cancer," said Dr. Ronald Levy, senior author of the study. "We know that if you get the immune system revved up, it can attack and kill cancer."
Since the study was only designed to test whether the plants were practical, safe and effective in stimulating a boosted immune system response, larger and more in-depth studies would need to be conducted to test how well such vaccines might perform in reducing the size of tumors.
The study was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and further studies of plant vaccine will be undertaken by the pharmaceutical company, Bayer.
