The future of Virginia’s tobacco growers could well be determined in a spanking clean lab room in an office park building on the outskirts of Blacksburg. It is here that research teams led by the husband and wife duo of David N. Radin and Carole Cramer toil to make the tobacco plant a more efficient generator of enzymes and proteins used to produce pharmaceuticals. "We saw the handwriting on the wall early in the 1990s," says Cramer. "We thought we could combine new technology with an alternative, high value product that would be of great use to the tobacco-growing industry."

Drs. David N. Radin and Carole Cramer Photo by Peter Galuszka

The two researchers founded CropTech, a private, for-profit research company in 1992. Radin, the chairman, is a former researcher at nearby Virginia Tech and Cramer, the company’s chief research officer, is still on the faculty at Virginia Tech and is recognized internationally as an expert on weeds and similar plants. Both have been exploring the use of tobacco to make proteins that are being used increasingly in genetic processes that make drugs. So doing, CropTech offers a healthy alternate use for the controversial weed.

Their concepts had languished for several years. But recently, they’ve received twin boosts. The market for pharmaceutical proteins has taken off nationally, growing in value from $1.8 billion in 1991 to $16.1 billion in 1999. Plus, Virginia is suddenly awash in new funds from its share of a $206 billion lawsuit settlement of 46 states with four major tobacco companies. Seeing the value of alternate markets for their crop, Old Dominion tobacco growers are putting money from the settlement indirectly into CropTech. They have formed a company called Tobio, which is borrowing $2 million from the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission to invest in CropTech and pay for research and development.

Specifically, the money is bankrolling seven sites in Virginia over the next three to four years in such places as Pittsylvania and Scott counties to grow tobacco that will be used as transgenic protein producers for drugs. Already, CropTech has contracts with several major drug makers to explore tobacco’s use in drug manufacturing. CropTech officials decline to name the drug companies.

Cramer says the seven test sites will be used to see if transgenic tobacco can be grown commercially. She expects the first commercial field to be ready by 2003 but the entire process will likely take five or six years because of the need for regulatory testing. Unlike tobacco grown for smoking, the leaves are harvested in their early stages when they are about three feet tall.

How much can tobacco for drugs replace leaf for smoking? Cramer says that "there are different ranges of products for very specialized proteins. We may be able to do it in less than 10 acres." Eventually, she says, tens of thousands of acres may be needed. The idea of using plants for drug-making proteins has been boosted in recent years because using animals as an alternative is riskier. Cows can generate proteins, but they also can carry mad cow disease or AIDS, Cramer says. Synthesizing proteins chemically is too complicated and expensive.

Tobacco growers seem excited about the prospects. "The potential is there that this could be an enormous thing in 10 to 15 years." says Oliver Coleman "Buddy" Mayhew, a Pittsylvania County grower and a board member of Tobio. He says that interest among Virginia growers is so strong in CropTech’s work that Tobio is planning to extend its equity in the company. The group plans on selling up to 2,400 shares in Tobio at about $2,500 per share to tobacco growers, says Mayhew. He says the plan will raise about $6 million, $3 million of which will be used to buy shares of CropTech and expand research.

Not all tobacco experts, however, agree about just how much transgenic tobacco will be able to supplant the huge tobacco-growing industry that is increasingly under fire. Gary Bullen, a tobacco specialist at North Carolina State University’s Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics, admits that the idea of using tobacco for drugs instead of smoking is interesting. He also says: "There won’t be a lot of farmers who would do that. It won’t be a cure-all for all the farmers’ problems." Maybe he’s right. But with the problems of tobacco’s future so complicated, any positive approach helps.

Return to Virginia Business - March 2001