Bayer broadens manufacturing basis for biopharmaceuticals in tobacco plants

Bayer Innovation and Kentucky Bioprocessing (KBP) are collaborating in the development of a facility at KBP's Owensboro plant in Kentucky to produce plant-made pharmaceutical proteins (PMP) and other high-value products in tobacco plants on commercial scale.

Under terms of the agreement, KBP will adapt its existing cGMP compliant facility by installing an automated system for high throughput transfection of tobacco host plants based on Bayer's proprietary magnICON technology, an innovative technology for the fast high-yield production of proteins in tobacco plants.

Construction on the magnICON related improvements at KBP is scheduled to begin in October 2008. Completion and initial testing of the new facilities is planned for spring of 2009.

MagnICON technology does not require genetic engineering of plants, but instead relies on a blueprint for the desired product delivered temporarily to the plant using a soil bacterium. Entire plants are infiltrated with a highly diluted suspension of bacteria carrying the blueprint.

The process has been shown to work with more than 50 different pharmaceutical proteins on laboratory scale and it can be performed on an industrial scale in a fully contained manufacturing facility. The speed and yield of magnICON offers new prospects for substances that have previously been impractical because of the length of time needed to produce them, or cost of their manufacture.

Bayer has internal product development projects - for example, a vaccine for the therapy of Non-Hodgkin-Lymphoma - based on the magnICON platform. The company is also in the process of licensing out this technology to several parties.