US-based firm eyes tobacco-based drugs

VIGAN CITY, Ilocos Sur – The tobacco as a saver instead of taker of life! A reversal of roles is in the offing for the disdained crop that is principally grown in the Ilocos.

Much has been said of the alleged ‘killer’ attributes of cigars and cigarettes, but hope runs high at the National Tobacco Administration (NTA) that tobacco may yet evolve as a wonder plant after its medicinal and other potentials are fully uncovered.

An upbeat mood is prevailing at the NTA and this was triggered by the sudden emergence of a New Jersey-based biotechnology firm which recently expressed its interest on the agency‘s research and development work on tobacco’s other uses.

NTA Administrator Carlitos Encarnacion said the US firm Phytomedics Inc. has offered to collaborate with the NTA in developing tobacco-based drugs.

Based in Dayton, New Jersey, the company has forged a joint undertaking with the renowned Bristol-Myers Squibb pharmaceutical company to develop therapeutic proteins using Phytomedics’ tobacco root-based biopharmaceutical production technology.

The technology, known as Recombinant Proteins Secretion Technology, is allegedly being developed at Rutgers University, a state institution in New Jersey, which the company has funded.

"I read with much interest your group’s work with the beneficial application of tobacco and thought I would introduce our group in hopes that there may be opportunities to develop," Ira Pastor, Phytomedics executive vice president, wrote in an Oct. 13 letter to Encarnacion.

The company’s attention was drawn by a recent Reuters news report on the NTA’s laboratory activities that are developing hand made paper, paint, feeds, particle board, pesticide, fertilizer, antibiotics and other medicinal products from tobacco.

Dr. Shirley Agrupis, NTA research consultant, said they are not sparing any part of the plant in their work claiming that all its parts are bases for various industrial and therapeutic products.

Encarnacion welcomed the American biotechnology firm’s offer saying its participation could facilitate NTA‘s medicinal research leading to the production of tobacco-based drugs.

"I look forward to a beneficial arrangement with the US company which should augur well to promote science and serve the best interest of our country and the farmers," Encarnacion told The STAR saying that his staff is seriously studying the Phytomedics proposal.

He said NTA’s thrusts on alternative products began in 1987, stopped in 1998 after the agency’s industrial research department was abolished, but were resumed and have gained momentum under the Arroyo administration, with the NTA chief citing President Arroyo and Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor as "visionaries."

Pastor expressed interest on tobacco extracts claiming they have "neuro-protective activities" that work against Parkinson‘s and Alzheimer‘s disorders adding that they "could make for a very lucrative product in the US pharmaceutical market."

Pastor’s firm’s research staff working in state-of-the-art facilities has reportedly turned in plant-based biotechnologies for the discovery and manufacture of novel pharmaceuticals and botanical drugs.

It has also engaged the Bio-Tech Center of Rutgers University under a broad research and licensing agreement, an activity headed by Prof. Ilya Raskin who had founded and now chairs Phytomedics.

"Our group is seeking to develop as a leader in the newly created regulatory area of botanical drugs: a very unique US drug development niche where select groups like Phytomedics now have the opportunity to take plant-based drugs all the way through the clinic by ourselves, at substantially reduced costs, and much shorter time frames than conventional synthetic pharmaceuticals," Pastor said.