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THIRD
World countries, including the Philippines, where the
level of acceptance of agricultural biotechnology is
reportedly better than its other Asian neighbors, should
take advantage of their respective environment conducive
for the looming “bioindustrial revolution.”
This
involves the so-called molecular farming or plant
factories, which is described as an emerging new
paradigm in the biotechnological arena today as an
offshoot of the recent scientific achievements in the
fields of physics and chemistry in the industrial age of
the 21st century.
“Today
in the ‘biotech century,’ we don’t need large amounts of
financial capital, especially in the developing
countries. All we have to do is take advantage of what
we have in ample,” said Eufemio Rasco, a professor at
the University of the
Philippines
in Mindanao and author of a new book, The Unfolding Gene
Revolution: The Ideology, Science and Regulation of
Plant Biotechnology.
Rasco
gave the keynote address in the two-day 34th annual
convention of the Philippine Society for Biochemistry
and Molecular Biology held at the Philippine Rice
Research Institute (PhilRice) in Muñoz Science City in
Nueva Ecija on November 29 and 30.
He also
launched his book, published by the International
Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications
and the Southeast Asian Research Center for Agriculture
about the so-called gene revolution.
He
observed that the new technological paradigm,
essentially a fusion of biology and information
technology, gives poor countries an opportunity to catch
up with what the richer nations had attained from
agricultural-based industrialization.
“Unlike
the industrial era, the biotech century does not require
large amounts of financial capital that the poor does
not have. It only requires biological materials and a
favorable environment that the tropics, where the poor
countries are located, are naturally endowed with,”
Rasco said.
He added
that the Philippines is ideal for “molecular farming” or
“biofactories” not only because of its favorable
tropical setting but also for the level of acceptance of
biotechnology, which is better than in China and India.
“Here we
eat our biotech products. It is only in the Philippines
where we grow food, orchid and other high-value crops
through biotechnology. In other Asian countries like
China and India, which are engaged in biotech alongside
the
Philippines,
they only produce pharmaceuticals and other products by
means of biotechnology,” Rasco said.
He said
it was about time Philippine agricultural scientists
should focus on “molecular farming” to produce local
drugs and vaccine.
“In the
biotech century, microorganisms, plants and animals will
continue to produce better quality traditional products
such as food, feed, fiber and ornamentals in a
sustainable manner using novel production systems that
are not land-intensive. There are nontraditional
products and novel processes now also under
development,” he emphasized in his presentation.
These
include “bioenergy” and pharmaceuticals, therapeutic
proteins and vaccines. Photosynthetic organisms, such as
plants, mosses and algae, have the advantage of
flexibility, efficiency and safety, he said.
He
quoted the European Union Framework and Pharma-Planta
Consortium, said to have introduced innovations on “biofarming,”
as saying that: “Molecular farming is reaching the stage
at which it could challenge established production
technologies that use bacteria, yeast and cultured
mammalian cells.”
He said
the same challenge is posed before local plant
scientists more so that there is an economic incentive
awaiting for them, such as the $30-billion market.
Rasco
cited the advantages of plants in biotechnological
endeavors as source of drugs and vaccines, among others.
It is better than bacteria for it can perform
posttranslational modification of proteins. It can
produce proteins that bacteria cannot.
It is
better than animal in being cheaper, safer and easily
scalable. “And it can be used directly without
extraction and purification as in edible vaccine,” he
continued.
In fact,
Rasco said, there had already been certain significant
breakthroughs in the field of “molecular farming,” like
the 1997 finding that biotech corn has avidin, the
glycoprotein in the egg albumen. Avidin in the seed, he
said, can be stored for a long time.
The
other products approved by the US Agriculture Department
in January 2007 for molecular farming include trypcin—produced
by Sigma-Aldrich, a pharmaceutical group, in 2004 from
biotech corn and a vaccine against Newcastle virus of
chicken produced from tobacco cell culture by Dow in
January.
Out for
market soon is the insulin produced from oilbodies of
safflower seeds. Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) is a
“thistlelike” herb endemic in cool-temperate countries
about three feet high with spiny heads of orange-red
flowers. Europeans used to extract oil from safflower
for food flavoring and coloring, it was said.
Safflower insulin, which reportedly passed the
equivalence test in January 2007, has a promising market
of about 16,000 kilograms by 2012 owing to the growing
number of diabetic people.
Safflower insulin can reduce capital cost in the
traditional production process by 70 percent and product
cost by some 40 percent over the current system, it was
said. It has a $11-billion potential market.
The UP
science professor enumerated the possible areas of
active research for molecular farming, which included
plastid transformation—involving high level accumulation
of foreign protein and transgene stacking, root culture
and plant-cell culture.
The
other potential areas of molecular farming are mosses
and microalgae. Molecular farming of mosses combines the
advantage of microorganisms and higher plants; its
production in bioreactor does away with the usual
regulatory problems; it can produce recombinant DNA
cheaper than higher plants. “Besides,” added Rasco, “the
N-glycvosylation problems with higher plants can be
mitigated by targeting in mosses.”
The
advantages in algae molecular farming, on the other
hand, are it has shorter production time compared with
higher plants, some of their species, like Chlorella and
Dunaliella, grow in saline water and, thus, will not
compete with land-grown crops.
Some of
their species do not produce toxins. They require simple
bioreactor design because algae are photoautotrophs,
meaning they produce their own food by the aid of
natural light.
Rasco
also noted the growing number of governments engaged in
biofuel research and applications being part of
molecular farming.
A recent
study showed that there was an increase in venture
funding for biofuel endeavors from $30 million in 2005
to $275 million in 2006.
“There
are many areas of concentration and potentials for
biofarming, or plant factories, in the
Philippines.
The government has only to identify what regulations are
needed on the issue of biosafety. On the other hand, the
private sector has only to tap local talents to exploit
the exciting possibilities of molecular farming. It is
for the researchers to explore,” Rasco said. |
