Pubdate: Sat, 21 Oct 2006
Source: Alaska Highway News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 Sterling Newspapers Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/cityguides/fortstjohn/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/716
Author: Murray Lyons

CANADA: BIOTECH COMPANY READY TO LEAD PACK

Biotech Company Ready to Lead Pack

The head of one of Saskatoon's pioneering biotech  companies, Prairie 
Plant Systems Inc. (PPS), says the  company is ideally placed to be 
among the leaders in  growing pharmaceutical drugs in plants.

Company president Brent Zettl says PPS's experience  during the past 
six years growing medical marijuana for  Health Canada in an 
underground growth chamber in part  of an old Flin Flon copper mine 
has helped prepare his  company for its next move into plant-based biopharmacy.

Zettl says the company has taken on a contract to grow  a vaccine 
antibody against hepatitis C within plants.  The deal was struck with 
the Saskatoon-based Vaccine  Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO), 
which is  developing the vaccine.

"We have embarked upon a program to look at ways to  have the plants 
themselves manufacture this new  hepatitis C vaccine," he said.

"If we enter the global stage with this one, it is  going to take a 
lot of time and money.

"It signals the beginning of a new era where plants can  be designed 
to produce protein-based medicines." It  wasn't just Zettl touting a 
big future for PPS on  Friday, as the company marked the opening of a 
new head  offi ce and laboratory just east of Boychuk Drive on  Highway 16.

The company has attracted an American expert to its  board of 
directors in Brandon Price, the former CEO of  Cognate Therapeutics 
Inc. and a vice-president with  Cardinal Health, both companies that 
are big players in  the biopharmaceutical industry.

Price says the cost of building huge bio-fermentation  tanks to 
synthesize drugs on an industrial scale runs  into the billions of dollars.

In just one growing class of molecules being tested 
by  pharmaceutical companies -- monoclonal antibodies,  which are 
drugs that will be the next weapon against  diseases such as cancer 
and heart disease -- Price  predicted 45 per cent of these drug 
therapies will  instead be produced by genetically inserting 
the  antibodies into plants.

"Plants offer a very economic alternative and they are  very effi 
cient," Price said. "Surprisingly enough,  plants such as tobacco 
plants or corn can make these  very, very complex molecules as well 
as humans can."  Price predicts pharmaceutical companies that develop 
the monoclonal antibody class of drug will contract out  the 
production of those molecules to companies that  know how to grow 
such plants under strictly controlled  conditions. The value of such 
contracts in 10 years  could grow to $1.26 billion US annually, he predicted.

Prairie Plants was founded by Zettl and two other  partners 18 years 
ago. Originally, the company was set  up to clone saskatoon berry 
plants to get a more  consistent variety that could aid commercial 
orchards  in berry production.

The company is still involved in that work, but it has  also created 
an environmental division that serves  companies such as Cameco Corp. 
doing remediation work  of mined-out landscapes by carefully 
propagating  northern plants.

The company has 38 employees in Saskatoon, Flin Flon  and a small 
underground growth chamber in Michigan.
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MAP posted-by: Elaine