ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 29, 1996 TAG: 9603290067
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ABINGDON
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tobacco farmers of the future may sell their crops to companies making proteins for drugs and enzymes for industries, but the benefits of biotechnology will be slow to emerge, researchers said Thursday.
``There is a tremendous potential here,'' Virginia Tech researcher Carole Cramer told Virginia and Tennessee Farm Bureau members. ``In the short term, the impact is going to be extremely small.''
For the next decade at least, a few tobacco fields could supply all the drugs used in biotechnology, she said.
Tobacco has been called the ``white rat of biotechnology'' because it is the easiest plant to engineer genetically, University of Tennessee researcher Robert Miller said. Human genes can be transferred to tobacco genes, and the altered tobacco plants become factories churning out inexpensive drugs.
``Tobacco, from a biotechnology point of view, is a very magical plant,'' Cramer said. ``A single transgenic plant produces a million seeds.''
Virginia Tech researchers recently succeeded in genetically engineering a tobacco plant to produce a human enzyme used to treat a rare genetic disorder known as Gaucher's disease.
The drug now being used to treat about 900 patients comes from human placentas, and a year's supply for one patient costs about $160,000, Cramer said. It takes as many as 8,000 placentas to produce one dose of the drug.
A single tobacco plant can produce enough of the enzyme for one dose of the replacement drug, she said.
But here's the downside for tobacco growers:
Only 10 acres of tobacco would be needed to produce the human enzyme used to treat patients with Gaucher's disease, she said.
``Every new drug will have to be tested from scratch,'' Cramer said. ``It will take 10 years to move through the regulatory process.''
But once the technology is proven, genetically engineered tobacco plants could be used for biological factories producing edible vaccines for animals and enzymes used in detergents, cosmetics, food additives and many other products, she said.
Studies have shown that farmers who now get $3,000 to $5,000 an acre for their tobacco crops could get $10,000 to $20,000 an acre producing for a genetically engineered crop.
``It's a little science fiction, but I think it's an exciting future,'' she said.
Miller said the tobacco industry needs to prepare for genetically engineered crops, even though it would probably affect only a small number of farmers.
The allotment system would have to be changed, and legislation should be passed that limits allotments for genetically engineered tobacco to current tobacco-growing states, he said.
``This should be considered as an additional opportunity, not a replacement option,'' Miller said.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB