Genetically modified rice to be grown for medicine

By GEOFFREY LEAN

Genetically modified crops engineered to produce drugs are to be grown commercially for the first time.

An American biotech company plans to start growing medicines to treat diarrhoea in modified rice in April. Its proposals were examined last week by regulatory bodies in California, but they have no power to stop the planting.

The rice will usher in a second generation of GM crops, which are bound to polarise opinion even more than those that have already caused controversy. Unlike current crops they could offer real benefits to millions of people - but they also pose far greater health risks.

Top officials at Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs believe the danger is so great that the new crops should never be grown in the UK. But Downing Street has cautiously endorsed them.

The possibilities for growing drugs in plants - dubbed "pharming" - have been researched for years, with scientists developing a wide range of vaccines and other medicines in several common foods in the laboratory.

But now Ventria Bioscience, based in Sacramento, is to plant 52.6ha with two varieties of GM rice that will produce lactoferrin and lysozyme, infection-fighting chemicals that it will market for use in oral rehydration products to treat severe diarrhoea.

It says this could generate enough lactoferrin to treat at least 650,000 sick children, and sufficient lysozyme for 6.5 million patients. It hopes to expand production to 405ha within a few years.

The company's plans have already caused alarm in California's rice-growing country. Organic farmers, in particular, suspect the GM rice will contaminate their crops; the company says there is "no risk".

The arguments were thrashed out last week before the California Rice Commission, which is drawing up a protocol of conditions under which the rice can be grown. But president Tim Johnson says that neither the commission nor the state's Agriculture Secretary, to whom it reports, has the power to stop the rice being cultivated.

The chemicals in the rice are relatively mild - they are found in mother's milk - but are likely to pave the way for stronger ones. Scientists, for example, have developed vaccines to treat diseases ranging from measles to hepatitis B - and antibodies to treat cancer and dental caries, provide contraceptives and prevent genital herpes - in potatoes, maize, wheat, rice, alfalfa, carrots and tomatoes.

Ventria says that its plants "will become 'factories' that manufacture therapeutic proteins to combat life-threatening illnesses". It adds that "plants improved through the use of biotechnology" can produce them for innovative treatments for cancer, HIV, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis, kidney disease and many others.

- INDEPENDENT