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You are in GM Crops and Food → Research and Development → Pharma crops

Pharma crops

The US Department of Agriculture has recently given final approval to the first commercial production of rice engineered to include human genes and produce human proteins found in breast milk and saliva. Over 3,000 acres of this GM rice will be grown in Kansas. There are concerns about what could happen if GM pharma crops entered the food chain, and about the environment impacts. There has also been no regulatory assessment of their benefits as drugs.

The development of GM crops to produce drugs and vaccines has received considerable investment and is relatively well advanced. Some high-value proteins for use in research and diagnostics are already in commercial production from GM plants. Currently, however, there are no drugs licensed for use that are produced in this way. GM plants are being investigated for the production of:

• vaccines;
• antibodies;
• therapeutic proteins.

The hype surrounding edible vaccines and 'food as pill' is misplaced as this is both unrealistic and a potentially dangerous option - it will be difficult to control intake and distribution, particularly in developing countries where education levels and literacy may be low. Ultimately, GM crops will at best provide a different form of manufacture of a protein or vaccine component. Where these replace a protein isolated from an animal or human source, this will have human safety benefits. However, the inadvertent consumption of a drug-producing crop and the potential for gene flow to other crops mean that food crops should not be used.

Recent Articles

• in Reports
  Non-Food GM Crops: New Dawn or False Hope? - Part 1: Drug Production
  1st December 2003

  This report reveals that the research in this area is being driven by a desire to produce drugs more cheaply and with the hope that the GM plant could be eaten as a simple way to administer a drug or vaccine. It is not clear whether such approaches will work, and using edible crops to produce GM drugs could be dangerous as they may be accidentally eaten by people or animals. Furthermore, there is little or no research being undertaken on the possible environmental impacts of growing such crops.
  

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