Bayer targets biotech research
9 Nov 2006
Following earlier heavy R&D expenditure in chemistry and then polymers, it is now life sciences - healthcare and crop protection - that is receiving the prime focus. And it is a focus that will increase further following the acquisition of Schering AG.
The strategy at Bayer CropScience, for example, is to underpin the company’s leading position in the crop protection market through innovation. This, according to chairman of the board Werner Wenning, will see research spending increase from Euro630 million this year to Euro750m by 2015.
“Plant biotechnology harbours major potential with respect to many unsolved problems,” said Wenning. “The challenge facing both politicians and industry is to educate people about these issues.”
Wenning stresses that plant biotechnology has important contributions to make in areas other than nutrition. For example, customised plants can be used as “bio-reactors” to manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients.
These plant-made pharmaceuticals include antibodies or vaccines that can be produced more quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively. It also creates a basis for producing medicines to treat diseases occurring in small groups of patients.
Icon Genetics, a subsidiary of Bayer Innovation, produces pharmaceuticals from tobacco plants using its MagniCON Process. Substantial market opportunities are seen for the process in the future and Bayer believes it is currently the leading technology for plant-made pharmaceuticals.
In MagniCON the genes required to produce the drug are incorporated into a plant virus, which is then introduced into the tobacco cells with the help of bacteria. This is not achieved by injection but by immersing the plants upside down in a bacterial solution and exposing them to a vacuum.
Using this method the gene is present in all the tobacco plant’s leaves, where it produces the desired protein or active substance. At the same time the plants don’t incorporate foreign genes into their genotype and after a period this foreign genetic information is lost.
The treated plants continue to grow under normal greenhouse conditions for about 10 days, forming, says Bayer, considerable quantities of the desired products in their cells. The products are then extracted in a purification process.
