Mutated food makes a great cholera vaccine

Rice could prevent deadly disease

Here’s how the new rice vaccine works. They produce a type of mutated rice, which includes a part of the protein common to the cholera bacterium. This makes it a perfect vaccine. It’s edible, doesn’t kill you and it builds immunity in the patient. If successful, it could have massive implications for world health.

The discovery was the work of a research team drawing on the Japanese government, universities and companies led by professor Hiroshi Kiyono of the University of Tokyo's Institute of Medical Science.

Somehow, he managed to galavanise participants as diverse as Rohto Pharmaceuticals, Asahi Kogyosha, Iwasaki Electric, Nippon Paper Group, the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences and Chiba University to work together.

Between them their expertise covers drug production, plant factory operation and the genetic modification of plants.

Mice developed antibodies to cholera after being fed the genetically altered rice. The team now expects to widen its vaccine making scope, using the same method. It has developed an influenza vaccine, which is being tested on mice.

“When the product becomes available, patients will not consume they way they’d eat white rice normally,” says Professor Kiyono, “they’ll use it as medicine, with set dosages."

Good thing too. The problem with the rice vaccines is, you eat one and twenty minutes later, you feel like another.

Now the researchers are working to increase the amount of proteins that can be included. The rice they developed as a cholera vaccine contains 15-30 micrograms per grain, but they need to increase this by five to 10 times in order to make the drug suitable for practical use.

Growing genetically modified plants outdoors is difficult in Japan. As a result, the team plans to build a hermetic plant factory for making its drugs. Similar projects are under way in the US. and Europe, but specialized plant factories have not been built yet in those locations.

"In Japan, there is still rejection of genetic modification," says a group leader at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, which operates a plant factory that is growing strawberries containing interferons for dogs on a trial basis. "With proper understanding, drugmakers can become more active, and Japan can become the global leader in this field."

May cure flu too

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