Just found this article. It's behind a free account wall, unfortunately.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/your-next-vaccine-could-be-grown-in-a-tobacco-plant
It's about using plants as bioreactors to create vaccines. Medicago, a Canadian company, has one in trials for flu (advantage: No eggs) and is working on one for COVID-19. They're using tobacco plants to create the vaccine (advantage: Something to do with tobacco now fewer people smoke it).
Even more intriguing, though, is the experiments on growing vaccines in common...lettuce. The advantage of this approach is that they are hoping to just be able to grind up the vaccine-infused lettuce and make pills out of it.
I can hear the hopeful sighs from everyone afraid of needles from here.
Oral vaccines also have another advantage...they can be used to vaccinate wild animals. Oral bait vaccine for rabies has all but eliminated it from swathes of Europe. With COVID-19, there's a very real risk of it reservoiring in mustelids, and being able to vaccinate wild mink, otters, and ferrets (especially black-footed ferrets, I'm quite worried about the species if it gets into their surviving wild population) would help us get it further under control.
Plant-based vaccines would also probably make quite a few vegetarians happy AND they're guaranteed to be kosher and halal...
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