Features

Small biotech firm
announces positive
results in battling
non-Hodgkins 

VACAVILLE – A small Vacaville biotechnology company has announced positive results from an experimental cancer drug customized to each patient and manufactured in tobacco plants. 

Large Scale Biology Corp. said Tuesday that its non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma drug has completed the first phase of tests on humans and will proceed to the second phase. 

Company officials are hopeful that commercial release of the non-Hodgkin’s product could be complete in three years, said Robert Erwin, chairman and chief executive of Large Scale Biology. 

The non-Hodgkin’s drug would be among the first cancer therapies genetically tailored to individual patients. The drugs for the first phase of tests were grown in tobacco plants in the company’s Vacaville greenhouse. 

The company decided to use tobacco because it has special qualities for growing pharmaceutical proteins, replicating itself quickly, said Erwin. 

The drug is manufactured by taking a genetic sample of the patient’s cancer cells, cloning it, and using the gene to produce therapeutic proteins in a tobacco plant. 

Erwin said the process is faster and cheaper than the conventional method for making other custom-made medicines, which are produced by having cancerous cells reproduce in a lab. 

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an immune-system disease that strikes 55,000 Americans a year, is among the most deadly forms of cancer.