Russian scientists from Moscow State University can make tobacco plants produce anti-tumor antibodies.
      
      Antibodies are proteins, which are produced in an organism in response to attack of bacteria, viruses and any alien proteins. Antibodies are able to bind with particular receptors, including receptors of tumor cells, and prevent cells form division.
      
      Current medicine uses genetically engineered antibodies, which are not cheap due to expensive hardware involved in the process.
      
      Russian scientists used tobacco mosaic virus for this purpose. This virus makes infected plant produce proteins, necessary for making new virus particles. Information about necessary proteins is encoded in viral RNA. Researchers replaced viral protein gene with antibody gene, and tobacco plant started making antibodies.
      
      New antitumor agent will be significantly cheaper than its analogues and requires less time to be produced. New technology is currently tested on mice.
      
      Source: Science & Life