Smokers, rejoice, because tobacco might be the future of flu vaccines

Tobacco-grown flu vaccines might be the future of our annual flu shot boom. No, it's not some kind of smokable vaccine, but rather a new method of growing vaccine cultures. Right now, most of the 130 million seasonal flu vaccine doses in the U.S. are made with live chicken embryos, which is expensive, slow and requires an awful lot of eggs. Enter Medicago, a Canadian pharmaceutical company that developed a process that coaxes tobacco plants into expressing the proteins to make vaccines. They made 10 million doses in a month last year, something that would have taken six months with egg-based vaccines. Gives new meaning to the phrase "wacky tobacky," doesn’t it? [Source]

Click to see more on msnNOW.com, updated 24 hours a day.