Your next vaccine could be grown in a tobacco plant
Long-awaited plant-based vaccine technology could help COVID-19 shots reach developing countries.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed glaring gaps in the world’s current vaccine production capacities. Conventional vaccine manufacturing is costly and complex. As a result, only a handful of countries have the technology, human resources, and funds to make vaccines; those that are able have faced recurrent challenges of contamination and quality control in the race to manufacture and distribute billions of COVID-19 vaccines. Conventional vaccines also have to be kept cold, some as cold as -76 degrees Fahrenheit, during transport and storage. The vaccine cold chain is not only costly but is also a major barrier for vaccine distribution in rural, hard-to-reach communities and in countries with limited infrastructure. The solution, some scientists believe, is using plants to
