ABOVE: MucoRice being grown to make the experimental vaccine
DIVISION OF MUCOSAL IMMUNOLOGY, THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO
Oral vaccines are currently part of the strategy to control the acute diarrheal disease caused by Vibrio cholera, especially in areas with poor sanitation. Yet, even at less than US $2 per dose, these vaccines can be costly for widespread use by poorer countries, and there remain 1.3–4 million estimated cases of cholera worldwide per year, and about 21,000 to 143,000 deaths from the disease. Now, the results of the first human trial of an edible cholera vaccine made from engineered rice show it increased antibody concentrations against a diarrheal toxin without inducing severe adverse events in the study participants, according to a report published June 25 in The Lancet Microbe.
The idea of using plants as biological vaccine factories is decades old. It’s a beautiful concept, says mucosal immunologist Hiroshi Kiyono of the ...
