Medicago

Owners

For October, 2020 Philip Morris International owns Medicago company together with Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma.

2020: Tests of vaccine against COVID-19 coronavirus on the basis of tobacco

Final tests of vaccine against COVID-19 coronavirus on the basis of tobacco will take place in December, 2020 – January, 2021. It is expected that 30,000 volunteers will take part in the third phase of clinical trials worldwide. Representatives of the Canadian company Medicago which together with the British GSK conducts work on vaccine on the basis of the vegetable protein received from a tobacco leaf told about it. The virus-like particles which are grown up on such platform imitate structure of COVID-19 and learn the immune system to distinguish them.

For October, 2020, according to Medicago, in the world pass preclinical tests of 149 vaccines, 38 more are on different phases of clinical trials. Canada develops 9 vaccines against a coronavirus, 8 of them pass preclinical tests, the first phase of clinical trials in this country was completed only by vaccine of Medicago company.

Works on production of antigen for vaccine from COVID-19 from a tobacco leaf began in March, 2020. In May positive results of testing on mice were received. 180 volunteers took part in the first phase of clinical trials. For October, 2020 there passes the second phase of clinical trials during which security and immunogenicity on 4 targetny groups of volunteers is checked: children from 5 to 17 years, adult, elderly are more senior than 65 years and people with comorbid (two and more at the same time) diseases. After end of this phase will begin final which assumes blind randomized testing with participation of 30,000 volunteers worldwide.

"First of all we were focused on security of future vaccine therefore selected option on vegetable protein. DNA infiltrutsya in a tobacco leaf which grows from 4 to 10 days then the plant ekstraktirut virus-like particles. Also now adjuvant for vaccine has training", - professor Brian Ward, the medical adviser of Medicago company told.

In this technology leaves of plants are used as bioreactors for creation of the tenon-shaped S-protein which is independently developing virus-like particles of CoVLP. Scientists selected from quality of the Nicotiana benthamiana platform, a kind of tobacco having natural capability to produce proteins with a high speed. The production cycle was as a result reduced to six weeks.

2009: Philip Morris International invested more than $15 million in Medicago

Philip Morris International invested more than $15 million in biotechnology company Medicago.