India, Us To Join Hands For Developing Edible Vaccines
India and the United States will collaborate to develop genetically-engineered edible vaccines. This is the first such venture between the two countries in a frontier technology area having enormous commercial potential.
Edible vaccines are the latest concept in paediatric care where instead of painful jabs, popular foods like chocolates are converted into antibody carriers to target specific disease causing virus and bacteria.
The current venture is part of an extended vaccine action programme between the two countries under which vaccines for tropical diseases like Hepatitis and Rotaviral diarrhoea have been developed. The edible virus programme will work towards finding antibodies for rabies, a disease estimated to claim over 1000,000 lives every year. The research will target plants from which the antibodies are to be derived and find processed food into which this can be introduced.
A meeting of US and Indian biotechnology experts held in Delhi during early March decided to enter this exciting area of research. The government sector research institutions in India which will execute this project are yet to be identified, sources said.
Under the broad agreement, specialised equipment and technical help will come from the US while the work of finding suitable antibodies from plants and cloning them into common foodstuffs will be done by Indians.
After the edible vaccine is developed, it may be patented both in India and the US and marketing rights may be shared between the collaborating laboratories, sources said. Edible vaccines are the object of intense research by major pharmaceutical companies the world over. World majors in paediatric research like Smith Kline Beecham are working to develop vaccines for a variety of child ailments.
An Italian company Ascipharma is working on an edible vaccine to combat tooth decay which it plans to introduce through chocolate. The antibodies in it will target the bacteria which reside in the cavities between teeth. Though the concept of edible vaccines is simple, the difficult part is to genetically engineer appropriate antibodies, grow them in a plant medium and introduce them in food.