Some misunderstandings muddying vaccination waters have to do with mistrust of chemicals. We welcome news Philip Morris International is planning a green tobacco based vaccine for that reason alone. Apparently Native Americans believed tobacco leaves had medicinal properties when Columbus arrived. Although he also observed them smoking them for the ‘pleasurable experience’.
Will Tobacco Turn Over a New Leaf at Phillip Morris?
Financial Times reported Phillip Morris is backing a Japanese company spearheading development on October 13, 2021. They hope their green tobacco-based vaccine will be cheaper, and easier to store and transport than conventional jabs.
Toshifumi Tada is vaccine business development head at Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma. He anticipates subsidiary Medicago will apply for Canadian approval this year. The only clue Financial Times shared was the candidate vaccine would be ‘from a plant of the tobacco family’.
Meanwhile Medicago is gambling on vaccine demand remaining high as new COVID-19 variants emerge. This seems a good horse to back in the race. But whether the tobacco giant’s wealth will enable it to rob market share from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, is another matter.
Positioning a Green Tobacco Based Vaccine in the Market
A traditional seasonal flu vaccine takes eight months to one year to develop, and manufacture. Whereas Phillip Morris expects the tobacco derivative could be ready for market in five to eight weeks. This would be the first approved plant-based vaccine, if it were successful.
The rapid production time would make it easier to modify for new COVID-19 virus strains. A plant-based vaccine would also store at 2C to 8C including during transport. Moreover, Tada says it should be ‘relatively safe for humans’ since it produces ‘virus-like particles’, as opposed to being based on deactivated virus.
Medicago plans to start producing 80 million doses annually at its North Carolina plant. But when its new facility in Quebec is up and running, this should increase to one billion a year by 2024.
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Preview Image: Nicotiana Strain of Tobacco Plants
