Menu

Blog

Oct 16, 2020

Tobacco Plants Contribute Key Ingredient For COVID-19 Vaccine

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

It looks like the Tabacco plant is being used for the Covid19 vaccine.


Historically, tobacco plants are responsible for their share of illness and death. Now they may help control the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two biotech companies are using the tobacco plant, Nicotiana benthamiana, as bio-factories to produce a key protein from the coronavirus that can be used in a vaccine.

“There’s obvious irony there,” says James Figlar, executive vice president for research and development for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. Reynolds owns Kentucky BioProcessing, one of the companies working on a COVID-19 vaccine from plants.

Comments are closed.