Source: NPR, 10/15/20


Historically, tobacco plants are responsible for their share of illness and death. Now they may help control the COVID-19 pandemic. Two biotech companies are using the tobacco plant, Nicotiana benthamiana, as bio-factories to produce a key protein from the coronavirus that can be used in a vaccine. "There's obvious irony there," says James Figlar, executive vice president for research and development for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. Reynolds owns Kentucky BioProcessing, one of the companies working on a COVID-19 vaccine from plants.

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