World's First Crop Of Pharmaceutical
Potatoes to Be Grown In Wisconsin
Company News Release
The beginning of this school year millions of children in the United States
had to undergo the painful jab of reality which accompanies the U.S. health
requirements for vaccination against Hepatitis B. In the very near future that
same vaccination might be given by eating bite-sized pieces of raw potato
containing an edible vaccine. Ask any child which vaccination they would
prefer?
Development of vaccines which are delivered through plants has been the
focus of the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI) of Ithaca,
New York. The vaccine for Hepatitis B has been placed into a potato and
that potato is now scheduled to be grown as a pharmaceutical crop in
Wisconsin by American Ag-Tec International, Ltd., a Delavan, WI based
agricultural technology company.
Production and manufacturing agreements have been reached between
Ag-Tec, and Axis Genetics of Cambridge, England, a plant pharmaceutical
company who now holds an exclusive License for this medical technology.
The agreement allows Ag-Tec to proceed in Wisconsin with the multiplication
of the first pharmaceutical potato crop in the history of the world.
American Ag-Tec International, Ltd. was selected for its expertise in
pioneering and patenting a technique for the rapid multiplication of
disease-free potato minitubers which is the first step of seed potato
development. The process, called Quantum Tubers™, has the capacity
to eliminate as many as five years from the field multiplication which
current seed production systems use worldwide. Additionally, the Quantum
Tubers™ technology is controlled biomanufacturing which lends itself to the
production protocols demanded by Axis Genetics for complying with the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration clinical approval process. The decision was
a natural because the production controls necessary for development of the
first pharmaceutical potato crop were already in place with Quantum Tubers™
via Ag-Tec.
" This advancement will revolutionize vacination programs. With its roots in
agriculture it will raise the status of the lowly potato by a quantum leap" said
Robert G. Britt, President of American Ag-Tec International, Ltd.
American Ag-Tec International, Ltd., based in Delavan, Wisconsin is an
international agricultural technology development company working in
seed and food production worldwide. The recent development of the
Quantum Tubers™ technology for mass output of pathogen-free seed potato
is the only technology of its kind with origins in production agriculture, as
well as in space. The technology has been developed through collaborative
arrangements with the NASA research program and the Department of Plant
Pathology, both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Visit the Ag-Tec
website at http://www.ag-tec.com/.
Axis Genetics is a private company based in Cambridge, England, developing
vaccines from plants. The company is working with Boyce Thompson Institute
for Plant Research, Ithaca, New York, to develop Edible Plant Vaccines for
the prevention of Hepatitis B, enterotoxigenic E. coli travelers' diaherrea, and
Norwalk virus infections. Using its proprietary chimaeric virus particle technology
EPICOAT® (Axis is also developing vaccines for cancer, Pseudomonas
aerruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus infections.
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