One of the world's biggest cigarette companies is teaming up with a tiny Canadian biotechnology firm to try to put one of the world's most deadly carcinogens to a healthy use - creating vaccines from tobacco to prevent people from catching the flu.
A $16-million investment by Philip Morris International will help Quebec City-based Medicago Inc. develop its early-stage technology that produces vaccines using tobacco leaves as a medium.
Medicago Inc. is at least a couple of years away from having its first vaccine - for avian flu - on the market, but the shot of capital will help propel it to that stage, chief executive officer Andy Sheldon said in an interview yesterday.
The marriage of a multinational tobacco company with an early-stage Canadian biotech firm may seem unusual, but the union makes sense, Mr. Sheldon said.
Medicago's technology, if successful, will make use of substantial amounts of greenhouse-grown tobacco. For its part, PMI is keen on finding new uses for tobacco beyond making health-damaging cigarettes.
"Philip Morris has made a decision that it wants to look at other business opportunities, and of course this one is just a natural," Mr. Sheldon said.
Executives from the two companies met at a biotechnology conference in Vancouver, he said, and both firms realized they could gain from co-operating.
In the deal announced yesterday, PMI will buy shares and warrants that will give it a 49.9-per-cent stake in Medicago.
The Medicago process does not alter the genetic makeup of tobacco, but involves injecting material into the leaf cells, which then secrete a virus-like protein that can be harvested and used as a vaccine to stimulate immunity.
When injected into humans, the vaccine prompts the production of antibodies that protect the individual from the disease.
Tobacco is used because it has very large leaves and grows quickly, making it an ideal plant to generate the vaccine.
It is also fairly easy to "program" tobacco cells using biotechnology techniques, to get them to produce the vaccine protein.
Mr. Sheldon said Medicago's process will allow the production of vaccines much more quickly than current systems, which use eggs as a medium and take up to eight months to generate a usable vaccine.
A large amount of vaccine can be harvested from tobacco in about three weeks, he said, an especially important quality in the case of a fast-moving influenza outbreak.
Philip Morris, which has been conducting its own biotechnology research to try to eliminate some of the carcinogens from tobacco, will likely have expertise that can contribute to Medicago's work, Mr. Sheldon said.
Ironically, Medicago takes its name from the Latin word for alfalfa, the plant the company initially used for its experiments.
It has abandoned alfalfa, however, and now uses only tobacco.
The avian flu vaccine is now in preclinical trials, and could be licensed as early as 2010, once the clinical trials are complete.
Eventually, the company's process could be used to create large volumes of vaccines for other strains of flu, or other infectious diseases.
"Our technology can be used to manufacture just about any vaccine, from malaria to pneumococcal vaccines... [or]HIV, which is an obvious candidate," Mr. Sheldon said.
MEDICAGO INC. (MDG)
Close: 30 cents, down 6 cents