Researchers use NBTs to turn tobacco plants into health-promoting biofactories

Researchers of the Molecular and Cellular Plant Biology Institute (IBMCP), part of the Universitat Politècnica de València, along with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), are coordinating the NEWCOTIANA project, a research and innovation initiative financed by the European Union which makes use of new plant breeding technologies to produce medicine, cosmetics and other products of added value in tobacco plants.

Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) is a crop used to produce cigarettes, which science has established as harmful for people’s health. However, tobacco plants can also be used to provide beneficial effects for users’ health. That is the objective of the NEWCOTIANA project, which proposes to apply high accuracy New Breeding Techniques (NBTs) to turn tobacco leaves (Nicotiana tabacum) and those of a similar species called Nicotiana benthamiana into biofactories of health-promoting substances such as anti-ageing or anti-inflammatory agents, as well as medicines such as vaccines or antibodies.

NBTs include, for example, the CRISPR technique, also known as the ‘genome editor’, which offers unprecedented opportunities to improve crops. Other NBTs researchers will apply include new grafting techniques or transitory gene transferring systems. “We will generate new varieties of tobacco and Nicotiana benthamina that safely work as biofactories to harvest medical substances of high added value,” explains Diego Orzáez, researcher for the CSIC and coordinator of the NEWCOTIANA project.

By exploiting NBTs, it is believed that NEWCOTIANA will contribute to revitalise traditional tobacco cultivation, which is weighed down by its current uses, creating new healthy uses – which will in turn revitalise rural areas in decline with products of high added value in line with the principles of growth economy.

According to Orzáez, “the consortium will perform experiments to evaluate the efficiency and safety of the NBTs, providing the industry, relevant politic figures and consumers with experimental tests that make it easier to make decisions on bringing NBTs to Europe. The scientific objectives of NEWCOTIANA are ambitious, and as well as solving a series of technical issues, we realise regulatory requisites must be taken into account, as well as starting a conversation with the interested bodies as well as the general public.”

NEWCOTIANA is a €7.2 million European project, financed by the Horizonte 2020 research and innovation program, coordinated by scientists at the IBMCP, CSIC and Universitat Politècnica de València, along with the involvement of 19 industrial and academic partners from eight European countries as well as Australia.