Is medicine from tobacco possible?

Tobacco isn’t famous for its health benefits. But now scientists have succeded in using genetically modified tobacco plants to produce medicines for its several auto immmune and inflammatory diseases, including diabetes. The research is published in the open access journal BMC Biotechnology.
A large team of scientists from several European research organizations have participated in the study as a part of the Pharma planta project. Led by professor Mario Pezzotti at the University of Verona, Scientists have created transgenic tobacco plants that would produce biologically active interlukin-10, a potent anti inflammatory cytokine. They tried two different veersions of interlukin-10(one from a mouse and the other from virus, and the generated plants in which this protein was targeted to three different compartments within the cell to see which would work most effectively.
The researchers found that tobacco plants were able to process both forms of interlukin-10 correctly, producing the active cytokine at high enough levels. The next step will be to feed these plants to mice with autoimmune diseases to find out how effective they are.
The scientists are keen to use the plants to see whether repeated small dose could help prevent type-1 Diabetes mellitus, in combinaation with other auto-antigens associated with the disease.
According to Pezzotti, Transgenic plants are attractive systems for the production of Therapeutic proteins because they offer the possibility of large scale production of foreign proteins at low cost, and they have low maintenance requirements. The fact that they can be eaten, which delivers the drug where it is needed, thus avoiding lengthy purification procedures, is another advantage compared with traditional drug synthesis.