Them Wacky Tobacky boys are at it again

From the Louisville Courier-Journal (boy I sure would like to link to the local story in Messenger-Inquirer but their sites requires a subscription)

HIV inhibitor grown in tobacco plants

But yesterday, Louisville's James Graham Brown Cancer Center announced that one of its scientists had used Kentucky tobacco plants to cheaply grow a potent, protein-based drug that inhibits HIV.

If clinical studies prove successful, the product, likely a preventive gel, could be on shelves around the world as early as 2015, providing a crucial method of reducing new HIV infections in places such as sub-Saharan Africa, according to Kenneth Palmer, who conducted the study.

"There's a big need for an effective, female-controlled intervention to protect from HIV," said Palmer, a senior University of Louisville scientist.

This is by far the biggest results to come from the Owensboro Cancer Research Program. The research behind this story was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (article here) and the research has picked up a good amount of attention from the science community and has been commented on in Nature (article here). For those of you not playing along at home the Proceedings of the National Academy and Nature are two of the top five journals to publish research in. This is the type of attention that top-notch research from the big institutions get and the little ole' labs up at the hospital are doing it. Maybe there is something to this plant-made pharmaceutical stuff.

Bonus points go to the authors for making the research open access, meaning you don't need a subscription to see the article.