Drug News Tomato vaccine may prevent Alzheimer's disease?
By Sue Mueller
Jul 8, 2008 - 2:29:43 PM
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TUESDAY July 8, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- Tomatoes could be
a suitable carrier for an oral vaccine against Alzheimer's disease, according
to a study published in the Biotechnology Letters.
HyunSoon Kim from the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience
and Biotechnology (KRIBB) in Korea and colleagues from Digital Biotech Inc. and
the Department of Biological Science at Wonkwang University conducted the
study.
The researchers reported that mice fed tomatoes with a
beta-amyloid protein developed immune response to the foreign protein.
Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia and
it is believed that the accumulation of human beta-amyloid causes the age-related
degenerative disease which leads to the death of neurons.
In the study, a vaccine was created to prevent or delay the
onset of Alzheimer's by stimulating the immune system to reduce beta-amyloid in
the brain.
Tomatoes were used because they can be eaten without
cooking, which would otherwise destroy the immune stimulation potential of a
foreign protein.
The researchers inserted the beta-amyloid gene into the tomato
genome and measured the immune response to the foreign protein in a group of 15
month-old mice.
To test the vaccine, they gave the mice orally the genetically
modified tomatoes
plants once a week for
three weeks, and then a booster four weeks later and then tested blood sample.
They found a strong immune response, the production of
antibodies to the foreign body, was generated after the booster.
The authors conclude: “Although we did not reveal a
reduction of existing plaques in the brain of mice challenged with
tomato-derived beta-amyloid…this study represents a unique approach in which
transgenic plants expressing beta-amyloid protein are used to produce a
vaccine.”
The researchers are now working to find strategies to boost
the production of protein in the tomato plants.
Fresh tomatoes contain only 0.7 % protein and the level of foreign
protein is even lower.