British American Tobacco, one of the world’s largest makers of cigarettes, has thrown its support behind the global effort to find a vaccine for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. 

The vaccine in development uses BAT’s proprietary, fast-growing tobacco plant technology which has several advantages over conventional vaccine production technology. 

Considering tobacco’s well-documented health negatives, it is ironic that tobacco plants offer the potential for faster and safer vaccine development compared with conventional methods. This, says BAT, is because tobacco plants can’t host pathogens which cause human disease.

The vaccine development also happens faster because the elements of the vaccine accumulate in tobacco plants much more quickly – six weeks in tobacco plants versus several months using conventional methods.

The work is being done by BAT’s biotech subsidiary, Kentucky BioProcessing (KBP), which is developing the potential vaccine.

KBP recently cloned a portion of Covid-19’s genetic sequence which led to the development of a potential antigen — a substance which induces an immune response in the body and in particular, the production of antibodies. This antigen was then inserted into tobacco plants for reproduction and, once the plants were harvested, the antigen was purified and is now undergoing pre-clinical testing.

If testing goes well, BAT is hopeful that, with the right partners and support from government agencies, between one and three million doses of the vaccine could be manufactured a week, beginning in June.

“Vaccine development is challenging and complex work, but we believe we have made a significant breakthrough with our tobacco plant technology platform and stand ready to work with governments and all stakeholders to help win the war against Covid-19,” says Dr David O’Reilly, director of scientific research, BAT.

“KBP has been exploring alternative uses of the tobacco plant for some time. One such alternative use is the development of plant-based vaccines. We are committed to contributing to the global effort to halt the spread of Covid-19 using this technology.”

This comes after Edward Holmes, the Australian scientist who unravelled the genetic code of the coronavirus, said the world should have been working on a coronavirus vaccine for years, but governments had become “complacent” about bat coronaviruses after SARS had been defeated.

After narrowly avoiding disaster with SARS in the early 2000s and MERS in the past decade, governments should have cracked down on wet markets and illegal wildlife trading, and started making broad-based coronavirus vaccines and drugs in readiness for the next coronavirus to emerge, he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Coronaviruses seem to be uniquely able to jump species for reasons scientists do not understand. SARS-CoV-2 is the third coronavirus from bats to jump into humans in the past 20 years, after SARS and MERS, which killed hundreds.

However, BAT is in good company as the quest to develop a vaccine is now well under way. 

Last week the World Health Organisation announced a major study to compare treatment strategies in a streamlined clinical trial design that doctors around the world can join.

Known as Solidarity, the trial is an unprecedented, co-ordinated push to collect robust scientific data rapidly during a pandemic, according to an article in the journal Science.

The study has emphasised simplicity so that even hospitals overwhelmed by an onslaught of Covid-19 patients can participate.

Other trials are also underway. All told, at least 12 potential Covid-19 treatments are being tested, including drugs already in use for HIV and malaria, experimental compounds that work against an array of viruses in animal experiments, and antibody-rich plasma from people who have recovered from Covid-19.

Many viruses, including HIV and hepatitis C, have thwarted vaccine developers. But this new coronavirus doesn’t appear to be a particularly formidable target, according to this article in Science. It changes slowly, which means it’s not very good at dodging the immune system.

KBP has previously made headlines — in 2014, as one of the few companies with an effective treatment for Ebola. It manufactured a plant-based drug with California-based company Mapp BioPharmaceuticals in partnership with the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

While KBP remains a commercial operation, the intention is that its work around the Covid-19 vaccine project will be carried out on a not-for-profit basis. BM