Thai company Baiya Phytopharm wants to develop the country’s first plant-based COVID vaccine derived from tobacco plants, reports CNBC.

The start-up, founded by Dr Suthira Taychakhoonavudh and Dr Waranyoo Phoolcharoen in 2018, is working on a vaccine using the leaves of an Australian tobacco plant.
In December last year, the company completed phase one human trials of its plant-based COVID vaccine “So far what we know is that…all the volunteers are safe. And looking at the safety profile, we’re very happy with that,” Suthira was quoted as saying. According to the report, she added that it is too early to determine its effectiveness rate, but the goal is to use available vaccines as a benchmark.
The drug company expects to start phase two trials in February and phase three trials in June. It hopes to submit data to Thailand’s Food and Drug Administration for vaccine approval by the third or fourth quarter of this year.
The company said it could quickly increase production capacity if the vaccine is approved. “Currently, our facilities can produce about five million doses of vaccines per month, or about 60 million doses of vaccines per year,” Suthira said.
Baiya wants to show that Thailand can “invent new vaccines and new drugs to tackle its own public health problems”, she said. The company uses the same tobacco plant to develop cancer drugs and anti-aging treatments.