Researchers at Western University and the Lawson Health Research Institute in Canada use tobacco plants as ‘green bioreactors’ to produce an anti-inflammatory protein with high therapeutic potential, ScienceDaily reported.

The tobacco plants are used to produce large amounts of a human protein called Interleukin 37 (IL-37). This protein is naturally produced in the human kidney in very small amounts. It has powerful anti-inflammatory and immune-suppressing properties that enable the treatment of a number of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases such as type 2 diabetes, stroke, dementia and arthritis, the report said.
According to the report, the clinical use of IL-37 was limited due to the inability to produce it in large quantities at a price that is feasible clinically. At present, it can be produced in very small quantities with the bacteria E. coli, but at very high cost.
This is where the tobacco plants come in: This work is the first of its kind to show that this functional human protein can be produced in plant cells, the report said. "The [tobacco] plants offer the potential to produce pharmaceuticals in a way that is much more affordable than current methods," Shengwu Ma, PhD, adjunct professor in the Department of Biology at Western and scientist at Lawson, was quoted as saying. "Tobacco is high-yield, and we can temporarily transform the plant so that we can begin making the protein of interest within two weeks."
In a recent study published in published in the journal Plant Cell Reports, the researchers showed that the protein can be extracted and quantified from the plant cells in a way that preserves its function. Now that they have shown that they can produce the protein in tobacco plants, it can be transferred to other plants, such as potatoes, the report said. "I hope that this work will impact a change in how people view plants and hopefully this approach will be a way to provide treatments to patients that are effective and affordable," Dr. Tony Jevnikar, professor at Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and scientist at Lawson, added.