[e-drug] Tobacco company and lung cancer vaccines

[Beverley Snell <bev@burnet.edu.au>]

E-drug: Tobacco company and lung cancer vaccines
------------------------------------------------------------

>From The Age, Melbourne, Tuesday November 13, 2001
Tobacco giant buys rights to lung cancer drugs
[Copied as fair use, BS]

By SARAH BOSELEY,
LONDON
Tuesday 13 November 2001

One of the world's biggest tobacco companies aims to make billions 
of dollars from diseases caused by cigarettes through deals with 
biotech companies for exclusive rights to future lung cancer 
vaccines.

The plan by Japan Tobacco, which makes Camel, Winston, Mild 
Seven and Salem, was condemned on Sunday as cynical and 
dangerous. If a successful lung cancer vaccine was found, it would 
not stop smokers dying of other tobacco-related diseases. But such 
a vaccine, promoted by a tobacco company, could encourage 
smoking.

"Giving a tobacco company exclusive rights to lung cancer vaccines 
is like putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank," said Helen 
Wallace, deputy director of GeneWatch UK, which uncovered the 
deals.

She is worried that one of the biotech companies, Seattle-based 
Corixa Corp, aims to patent human lung cancer gene sequences, 
which may have come from a smoker unaware of the commercial 
prospects his genes offered.

Derek Yach, director of the non-communicable diseases cluster at 
the World Health Organisation, said: "We tackle lung cancer by 
breaking the addictive grip of the tobacco industry and taking action
to help people quit smoking or never start. The last company that 
should control the rights to a lung cancer vaccine is one that makes 
huge profits from products that cause the disease."

Japan Tobacco has paid Corixa for an exclusive licence to develop 
and sell vaccine and antibody-based products that prevent or treat 
lung cancer.

The idea is to use certain proteins in lung cancer tumors to generate 
an immune response in the patient.

The other contract, with California-based Cell Genesys, was signed 
in late 1998.

Japan Tobacco has also invested in UK company British Biotech, 
which is working on a genetically engineered protein that can 
dissolve and prevent blood clots and may help prevent heart attacks 
and strokes.
  GUARDIAN


Beverley Snell
International Health Unit
Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research & Public Health
P O Box 254 Fairfield Vic Australia 3078
Telephone 613 9282 2115 / 9282 2275
Fax 613 9482 3123
Time zone: 11 hours ahead of GMT.
email <bev@burnet.edu.au>


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