View source for Myth: Tobacco Plants Are Only For Smoking


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[[File:Alternative Uses for Tobacco.png|center]]

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'''<big>As the world strives for a future that drastically reduces or even eliminates the smoking of commercial tobacco, the question arises: What will happen to tobacco farmers? Is the tobacco plant useful for anything outside of commercial tobacco products, or for sacred use?</big>'''

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=Nicotine=

==Potential Therapeutic Benefits==
*Please see our page "[https://safernicotine.wiki/mediawiki/index.php/Nicotine_therapeutic_benefits Nicotine therapeutic benefits]" for a surprising list of possibilities.

=Tobacco Plants=

==Medicinal Uses of Tobacco==

===2004: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1079499/ Medicinal uses of tobacco in history]===
*Conclusion: "In my own review of the published work four points struck me forcibly. First, too much was expected of tobacco. In medieval times, most herbs would be used only for a few conditions in which it was deemed effective—not for a vast range of disorders from head lice to haemorrhoids, from hysteria to tetanus, as happened with tobacco. Secondly, writings on this subject commonly imply that nicotine is the only active medicinal constituent, yet the various species of Nicotiana contain many other alkaloids. Thirdly, the leaves and juice were much used for skin disorders, possibly including basal cell cancer. Might tobacco leaves contain an anticancer agent, as proved to be the case with periwinkle (vinca alkaloids)? Fourthly, in therapeutic applications of tobacco, dosage was largely uncontrolled. With any useful agent, excess dosage will do harm. I suggest we should set aside the prejudices generated by the ill-effects of tobacco smoking and examine the leaves systematically for substances of therapeutic value."

==Using the plant to make vaccines and medicines - Studies, Scholarly Comments==

===2024: [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11045950/ Phytochemicals derived from Nicotiana tabacum L. plant contribute to pharmaceutical development]===
*"Modern medical and pharmaceutical studies have investigated that the abundant and distinctive function metabolites in tobacco including nicotine, solanesol, cembranoid diterpenes, essential oil, seed oil and other tobacco extracts, avoiding the toxic components of smoke, mainly have the anti-oxidation, anti-lipid production, pro-lipid oxidation, pro-insulin sensitivity, anti-inflammation, anti-apoptosis and antimicrobial activities. They showed potential pharmaceutical value mainly as supplements or substitutes for treating neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, inflammatory diseases including colitis, arthritis, sepsis, multiple sclerosis, and myocarditis, and metabolic syndrome including Obesity and fatty liver. This review comprehensively presents the research status and the molecular mechanisms of tobacco and its metabolites basing on almost all the English and Chinese literature in recent 20 years in the field of medicine and pharmacology."

===2020: [https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2020.594591/full “Tobacco Is the Chief Medicinal Plant in My Work”: Therapeutic Uses of Tobacco in Peruvian Amazonian Medicine Exemplified by the Work of a Maestro Tabaquero]===
*Tobacco (especially Nicotiana rustica L.) in this area is described as a potent medicinal plant, used topically or via ingestion to treat a variety of health conditions. The goal of this transdisciplinary field study was to investigate clinical applications of the tobacco plant as per Amazonian medicine exemplified in the practice of a reputed Maestro Tabaquero, an Amazonian traditional healer whose medical specialization focuses on tobacco-based treatments.

===2014: [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/21645515.2014.970973 Expression of HPV-16 L1 capsomeres with glutathione-S-transferase as a fusion protein in tobacco plastids: An approach for a capsomere-based HPV vaccine]===
*Alternative cost-effective vaccine production approaches need to be developed. This study on plant-based (tobacco) expression of capsomeres supports the development of cost-effective thermostable HPV vaccines, which is highly desirable for resource poor countries.

===2010: [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21360963/ Tobacco--a highly efficient producer of vaccines]===
*The possibility of a high-level production of vaccines in tobacco against pandemic influenza or anthrax and plague due to a bioterroristic attack, as well as of individualized anticancer vaccines against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) in a much shorter period of time than by traditional methods became realistic and hence caused increased interest in tobacco as a high-efficient producer of vaccines not only of specialistic biotechnology firms but also a big pharmaceutical corporation and a department of defense.

===2009: [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bit.22397 Using Tobacco to Biomanufacture Novel Vaccines]===
* This work offers new technology for creating vaccines and hope for reducing vaccine costs.

==Using the plant to make vaccines and medicines - Articles, News, Blogs, etc.==

===2023: [https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2023/05/native-tobacco-plants-reborn-biofactories%E2%80%99-medicines-0 Native tobacco plants reborn as ‘biofactories’ for medicines]===
*"Professor David Craik and Dr Mark Jackson from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience have demonstrated native wild tobacco, ''Nicotiana benthamiana'', can potentially produce large quantities of drugs, cheaper and more sustainably than industrial manufacturing methods."
*"The researchers grew the drug T20K, which is currently in phase 1 clinical trials to treat multiple sclerosis (MS), a devastating autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system...We have shown it is possible to scale up production of cyclotides in plants, providing a platform for growing other medications for pain, cancer or obesity,” Professor Craik said."

===2023: [https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/scientists-have-made-cocaine-from-a-tobacco-plant Scientists Have Made Cocaine From a Tobacco Plant]===
*"Cocaine is perhaps most notoriously known as a dangerous drug. But it’s also used legally as a local anesthetic for surgeries. Scientists in China have now genetically engineered a tobacco plant to produce cocaine in its leaves."

===2022: [https://archive.is/bI2Mb Genetically modified tobacco plant produces cocaine in its leaves]===
*"Researchers have reproduced the entire biochemical pathway for how coca plants make cocaine in another plant, which could help people manufacture the drug for scientific study"
*"But using other plants to produce cocaine won’t offer an advantage for illicit producers, says Lichman. Growing and harvesting coca, and purifying cocaine from naturally productive plant tissue, is orders of magnitude more scalable and cheaper than producing it in another plant, he says, but having the biosynthetic pathway mapped out could lead to the production of chemically similar compounds to cocaine that have unique medicinal properties."

===2021: [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/your-next-vaccine-could-be-grown-in-a-tobacco-plant Your next vaccine could be grown in a tobacco plant]===
*"The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed glaring gaps in the world’s current vaccine production capacities. Conventional vaccine manufacturing is costly and complex. As a result, only a handful of countries have the technology, human resources, and funds to make vaccines; those that are able have faced recurrent challenges of contamination and quality control in the race to manufacture and distribute billions of COVID-19 vaccines. Conventional vaccines also have to be kept cold, some as cold as -76 degrees Fahrenheit, during transport and storage. The vaccine cold chain is not only costly but is also a major barrier for vaccine distribution in rural, hard-to-reach communities and in countries with limited infrastructure. The solution, some scientists believe, is using plants to manufacture vaccines."

===2020: [https://www.sciencealert.com/large-scale-studies-test-flu-vaccine-derived-from-tobacco-plants-for-the-first-time First-Ever Flu Vaccine Derived From Tobacco Plants Just Smashed Clinical Trials]===
*Most influenza vaccines are currently made using virus particles grown in and harvested from chicken eggs or lab-grown cells, which takes months even after scientists work out which flu strains (and surface proteins) they need to target.
*Plants, which can be engineered to produce select proteins and cultivated at scale, could be an alternative, helping to boost our capacity to produce seasonal flu vaccines.

===2020: [https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/15/923210562/tobacco-plants-contribute-key-ingredient-for-covid-19-vaccine#:~:text=Two%20biotech%20companies%20are%20using,be%20used%20in%20a%20vaccine. Tobacco Plants Contribute Key Ingredient For COVID-19 Vaccine]=== 
*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.

===2020: [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/16/british-american-tobacco-approval-test-covid-vaccine-humans British American Tobacco wins approval to test Covid vaccine on humans]===
*While large pharmaceutical companies are already producing vaccines, BAT believes its own can be produced in six weeks, compared with the several months it takes using conventional methods.
*BAT also says its vaccine is stable at room temperature, unlike the Pfizer/BioNTech jab being administered in the UK, which must be stored and transported at about -70C.
*The vaccine has been developed by BAT’s biotechnology division, Kentucky BioProcessing (KBP), which has previously worked on a treatment for Ebola and is also developing a seasonal flu vaccine.

===2019: [https://www.news-medical.net/health/Tobacco-Plants-and-Drug-Development.aspx Tobacco Plants and Drug Development]===
*"The first plant to be used to produce a recombinant antibody, back in 1988, was the tobacco plant. Other plants have also been used for pharmaceutical production, such as maize, wheat, tomato, potato, mustard, banana, and soybean. Tobacco is preferred as the host plant because of its rapid growth and high volume of production. It expresses foreign products much more quickly than with bioreactors, and at a significantly reduced cost."

===2014: [https://time.com/3457472/see-how-ebola-drugs-grow-in-tobacco-leaves/ See How Ebola Drugs Grow In Tobacco Leaves]===
*"Why plants? The time it takes to grow a plant is less time than it takes to genetically engineer a mouse or other rodent to produce human antibodies, which is how such products have been made in the past. It’s also less expensive. Plant-based manufacturing represents a promising new way of producing drugs that could cut the time it takes to bring critical medications, such as a flu vaccine during a pandemic, to a large number of people. Researchers have used the technology to develop a vaccine against norovirus, the infection that plagues cruise ships, for example, that is being tested now."

===2011: [https://www.the-scientist.com/tobacco-plants-make-hiv-antibody-42187 Tobacco Plants Make HIV Antibody]===
*"Last month, a monoclonal antibody produced in the leaves of tobacco plants entered phase I clinical trials in the United Kingdom. The antibody, known as P2G12, recognizes an HIV surface protein and is expected to help stop the transmission of the virus, although it has never been tested in humans. The phase I trial, underway at the University of Surrey, will test the safety of vaginally applying the antibody to 11 healthy women."
*"This is the first plant-produced antibody to be cleared for clinical trials by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Agency (the UK equivalent of the US Food and Drug Administration). Producing the antibody using tobacco plants grown in a greenhouse in Germany is 10 to 100 times cheaper than using conventional methods employing bacteria or mammalian cells, Smart Planet reports. “Monoclonal antibodies can be made in plants to the same quality as those made using existing conventional production systems," Professor Julian Ma from St George's University, London and joint co-ordinator of the project, told The Guardian. “That is something many people did not believe could be achieved.”

==Is there opposition to using tobacco plants to make vaccines and medicines? If yes, why?==

===2023: [https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/how-the-world-health-organization-helped-kill-a-promising-made-in-canada-vaccine/ How the World Health Organization helped kill a promising made-in-Canada vaccine]===
*"The World Health Organization (WHO) has championed the need for out-of-the-box thinking on vaccine production and supplies to protect the world. But when faced with that very situation, the WHO evoked a 2005 policy, and sentenced a promising made-in-Canada vaccine to a tragic death because of a minority link with a tobacco company...A year ago, officials with the agency refused to endorse a vaccine made by Quebec-based Medicago. It used a plant related to tobacco as the "factory" to produce virus-like particles that taught the immune system to fend off the virus that causes COVID-19...The Medicago technology was also widely seen as having great potential for creating both vaccines and antibody treatments for other conditions, including cancers, arthritis and multiple sclerosis. But the plants used in production are a cousin of the tobacco plant and were supplied by tobacco giant Phillip Morris, which was a minority (21 per cent) shareholder...One advantage Medicago's product had over some of the approved vaccines is that it doesn't have the same cold storage requirement as mRNA shots, and so "would have been more suitable for Africa and places like that," said Watts."

==Food==

===2024: [https://dnascience.plos.org/2024/06/20/can-engineered-tobacco-plants-that-make-human-sugars-improve-infant-formula-and-plant-based-milks/ Can Engineered Tobacco Plants that Make Human Sugars Improve Infant Formula and Plant-Based Milks?]===
*"The researchers call their retooled cells of Nicotiana benthamiana (aka benth or benthi), a close relative of the tobacco plant from Australia, a “photosynthetic platform for the production of diverse human milk oligosaccharides.” The goal is to mimic the difficult-to-synthesize unique blend of sugars required for commercial infant formula to be as close to the real thing, nutritionally, as possible."

===2022: [https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2022/03/29/the-future-of-meat-the-tobacco-plant/ The future of meat: The tobacco plant?]===
*Israeli start-up BioBetter is repurposing tobacco plants in attempt to overcome the greatest hurdle currently facing the budding cultivated meat industry: scaled production.

===2015: [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/03/cooking-with-tobacco-food A little tobacco in your chai? Leaf finds its way on to menus around the world]===
*"Tobacco is hitting menus throughout the world, whether it’s in a chicken wing sauce at the Morris House Bistro in Cheyenne, Wyoming; made into flour to dredge onions in like at JK’s Restaurant in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina; infused into sugar as Naomi Gallego does in her post as Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s pastry chef; or even as whole leaves added to chocolate bars, as at London-based Artisan du Chocolat."

==Fuel==
*See also: Multiple Uses

===2016: [https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/20/africa/tobacco-jets-south-africa/index.html Tobacco-fueled jets take off in South Africa]===
*"The first commercial planes in Africa to use biofuels carried 300 passengers between Johannesburg and Cape Town. The Boeing jets, operated by South African Airways (SAA), were partly powered by nicotine-free, high-energy “Solaris” tobacco plants cultivated by farmers in Limpopo Province..."

===2016: [https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/jul/06/us-farmers-turning-tobacco-into-airplane-fuel-biofuels-renewables Meet the US farmers turning their tobacco into airplane fuel]===
*"Since 2009, the US biofuel company Tyton BioEnergy Systems has partnered with agronomists from Virginia Tech and North Carolina State University and tobacco growers to research the potential for turning tobacco into biomass."

===2014: [https://www.kqed.org/quest/68329/tobacco-gets-a-makeover-as-new-source-for-biofuel Tobacco Gets a Makeover as New Source for Biofuel]===
*"The most common source for biofuel in the U.S. is corn, which is fermented and turned into an alcohol, called ethanol, that is added to gasoline and used to power automobiles. To create biofuel from tobacco, researchers have added genes from algae and cyanobacteria that can process sunlight more efficiently than corn does and convert the sunlight into hydrocarbons via photosynthesis. Hydrocarbons in the engineered tobacco are a form of bio-crude oil, an antecedent to fuel. This bio-crude can be stored in the leaves and directly removed and processed to create biofuel, which requires fewer steps than making ethanol, the researchers say."

==Multiple Uses==

===2019: Video: [https://www.cornell.edu/video/researchers-make-enzymes-using-tobacco-plants Researchers make much needed enzymes using tobacco plants]===
*"If we’re not using that cropland to make cigarettes anymore, then perhaps we could use that cropland to make enzymes.” Beth Ahner, professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, shows how tobacco plants can be used to make functional proteins for the manufacture of products such as denim, laundry detergent, paper and ethanol."

===2016: [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-016-0395-5 Alternative use of tobacco as a sustainable crop for seed oil, biofuel, and biomass]===
*"This study shows for the first time the cultivation feasibility in Italy of a small-size tobacco variety selected for high seed production. With a further optimization of the cultivation protocol to increase the oil yield and to use the by-products, tobacco can really become a novel industrial crop providing renewable sources for both biofuel and biomass as well."

===2008: Philippines National Tobacco Administration: [https://nta.da.gov.ph/programs_uses.html Other Uses for tobacco plants]===
*They share the work they are doing in the following areas:
**Medicinal & Veterinary Product Development
**By-Products & Waste Utilization
**Food & Feed Products Development
**Wood, Pulp & Fiber Product Development

===2006: [https://intapi.sciendo.com/pdf/10.2478/cttr-2013-0824 Tobacco Research and Its Relevance to Science, Medicine and Industry*]===
*"This article is a historical review and a vision for the future of tobacco plant research. This is the perspective of an experienced tobacco scientist who devoted his total professional career to tobacco research. From the very beginning, pioneering tobacco research was the foundation of plant science at the dawn of modern development, in such areas as light, nutrition, genetics, growth control, disorders and metabolism. Tobacco research led to current advancements in plant biotechnology. In addition, tobacco plant research contributed significantly to public health research in radioactive elements, mycotoxins, and air pollutants. However, public support for tobacco research has today greatly declined to almost total elimination because of a sense of political correctness. This author points out that tobacco is one of the most valuable research tools, and is a most abundant source of scientific information. Research with tobacco plants will contribute far beyond the frontiers of agricultural science: tobacco can be a source of food supply with nutrition value similar to that of milk; tobacco can be a source of health supplies including medical chemicals and various vaccines; tobacco can be a source of biofuel. All we need is to treat tobacco with respect; the use of tobacco is only in its initial stages."

==Other potential uses for tobacco plants==

===2024: [https://leafngrainsociety.com/featured/10-surprising-uses-of-tobacco/ 10 Surprising Uses of Tobacco Around Your Home and Garden]===
*"Tobacco has been around for centuries, and while it’s most commonly approached in the form of smoking cigars around here, it has many other surprising uses, especially around your home and garden. Let’s dive into ten unexpected ways you can use tobacco that you might not have known about!"
*SNW Team comment: We don't recommend most of these. It would kill good and bad bugs. And there is a virus tobacco plants can spread to tomato plants (based off of memory...)

===2020: [https://www.sci.news/biology/glowing-tobacco-plants-08368.html Researchers Create Glowing Tobacco Plants]===
*"An international team of scientists has genetically engineered tobacco plants (Nicotiana tabacum) with a fungal bioluminescence system. This biological light can be used by scientists for observing the inner workings of plants as well as for practical aesthetic purposes, most notably for creating glowing flowers and other ornamental plants."
**Study: [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7610436/ Plants with genetically encoded autoluminescence]
***"Autoluminescent plants that express a bacterial bioluminescence gene cluster have not been widely adopted due to requisite expression in plastids and low light output. Alternatively, we have engineered tobacco lines expressing a fungal bioluminescent system, which converts caffeic acid present in all plants into luciferin, and report self-sustained luminescence easily visible to the naked eye. Our findings might underpin development of a suite of imaging tools for plants."

===2019: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/tobacco-plants-made-to-produce-useful-compounds/ Tobacco Plants Made to Produce Useful Compounds]===
*"But tobacco is also used a lot in scientific research. And a new study shows tobacco can be genetically engineered to churn out large amounts of a commercially important bacterial enzyme known as cellulase. The enzyme has many industrial uses, including as an agent in the production of biofuel...University of Illinois plant biologist Justin McGrath is a co-lead author of the study. He says the work could lead to lower costs for producing useful proteins like enzymes and some vaccines. That’s because it can be way cheaper to cultivate tobacco plants in a field than to grow genetically modified yeast and other microbes indoors in large fermenters."

===2019: [https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/09/19/132948/a-material-derived-from-tobacco-is-as-strong-as-wood-or-plastics/ A material derived from tobacco is as strong as wood or plastics]===
*"This team has found a way to turn cells from tobacco plants into a hugely strong material with wood-like mechanical properties. “We have developed a new method to create natural biocomposite materials based on plant cells,” they say. “[The materials’] stiffness and strength surpass that of commercial plastics of similar density, like polystyrene, and low-density polyethylene, while being entirely biodegradable.”

===2010: Patent Application: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110287681A1/en Textiles and Process for Making Textiles and Dyes from Tobacco Plants]===
*"A textile and a dye manufactured from fibers that are derived from tobacco plants and a process for making the textile and dye from the tobacco plants. In a preferred embodiment, the tobacco is organically grown and the entire tobacco plant, including stem and leaves, is utilized to produce the tobacco plant fiber used for making a textile and a natural dye utilized to color the textile or other textiles..."

===1996: Patent Application: [https://patents.google.com/patent/CN1140215A/en Method for making multipurpose pulp from waste tobacco stalks, stems and leaves]===
*"A method for producing multipurpose paper pulp with waste tobacco stem, stalk and leaf comprises five technological steps of preparing waste tobacco raw material, quick separation of fibrous substance from soluble matter, chemically and mechanically modifying the fibrous substance to make high-strength raw pulp to be bleached, comprehensive regulation and bleaching, and extrusion forming of concentrated pulp."

=Suggested Studies and Articles to include on this page=


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