The London Free
Press

The forum for the exchange of scientific ideas and development of commercial partnerships opened yesterday and runs until Wednesday. Between 350 and 400 top researchers, representatives of the health-care industry, business venture capitalists and lawyers from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Japan and Australia will gather to listen to nearly 80 speakers, attend workshops and browse through the accompanying trade show. John Kime, president and chief executive of the London Economic Development Corp., was quoted as saying that "London has identified...the research end of biotech (ag-biotech, ag-pharmaceuticals) as part of our future," and while he admits there is a certain reluctance to embrace this kind of research, Kime warns of a lossed opportunity if London fails to act. Despite lingering controversy, biotechnology and molecular farming are facts of life, says Kime. The story says that now roughly seven years old, the science is yielding compounds such as interleukin-10 and interleukin-4 from tobacco plants to fight Crohn's disease and juvenile diabetes, respectively. One research laboratory in the United States is working on bananas that contain a vaccine for bacterial diarrhea. Most of these projects are three to five years away from commercial viability. London-based Jim Brandle, a molecular biologist and research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, was quoted as saying, "Because you're going to find that of a given vaccine, you're not going to need 10,000 acres to produce enough. It's going to require a small number of plants in a small area. ... The near-term stuff is going to be low-volume and I think, therefore, the impact on agriculture is limited." Brandle does point out growing such crops will require specific management skills for which premiums will likely be paid. However, the plants being grown will not be part of the regular food chain since their whole existence will be based on producing drugs. To Brandle, there is little potential for public backlash, despite the close association of molecular farming with biotechnology, which is attracting heated scrutiny from critics of genetic engineering, which involves the moving of genes over species. The story says that biotechnology critics such as Ann Clark, associate professor of crop science at the University of Guelph, remain concerned the risks to the natural environment of doing so have not been fully studied. Opponents say interfering with nature at its most basic level will affect humans, animals and the environment in unforeseen ways. Their fears have given rise to the term "Frankenstein food." Tobacco, potato and corn plants that are used in molecular farm research are, in fact, products of biotechnology. Tobacco plants, for instance, have been genetically altered to reduce the nicotine content.