Owensboro Cancer Research Program awarded $2 million

Oct 02, 2008 (Messenger-Inquirer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- LSBC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- President Bush signed legislation Tuesday night, approving $2 million for research at the Owensboro Cancer Research Program.

That comes on top of $2 million earmarked for the program at Owensboro Medical Health System in last year's defense budget.

"These funds will provide the Owensboro Cancer Research Program with additional resources to better understand, treat and prevent cancer," U.S. Rep. Ron Lewis said in a news release. "This research is critical for the development of important new plant-based pharmaceuticals."

Keith Davis, the program's executive director, said the federal money will be used for further research into growing various vaccines in plants, primarily tobacco.

The OCRP hopes to eventually win federal contracts to produce specific vaccines for the government, he said.

Davis said he plans to visit federal laboratories to look for ways the OCRP can become more involved.

"We've put in proposals in the past," he said, "but they haven't been funded. We want to demonstrate that we can really do this."

Lewis has been working to support the plant-based pharmaceutical industry in Owensboro for years.

In 2001, he helped secure $2.5 million for Large Scale Biology, the California-based company that built what is now Kentucky BioProcessing's biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility in MidAmerica Airpark.

That money was for a program the Navy was working on with Large Scale and the National Institutes of Health to develop a way to take radiation-damaged bone marrow stem cells from people, clean them with the tobacco-based technology and replant the clean cells into the victim's bone marrow, Lewis said at the time.

He said in 2001 that the research funded by the appropriation was designed to "find cures for military members and civilians exposed to radiation, make progress on cancer cures and advances in stem cell research that do not involve the destruction of human embryos."

In 2002, Large Scale, which would dissolve in bankruptcy court four years later, was talking with federal officials about using its tobacco-produced vaccines to combat "viro-terrorism."

Company officials said the Owensboro plant could produce 250 million doses of a vaccine within 24 weeks, using 2,000 acres of tobacco in Daviess County and an equal amount in Homestead, Fla., and in South Carolina.

They estimated the cost of producing 250 million doses of vaccine at $30 million.

Davis said the OCRP and KBP are still interested in working with the government to produce vaccines.

"We can turn things around very quickly," he said.

The University of Louisville's Brown Cancer Center and the Owensboro Medical Health System created the Owensboro Cancer Research Program as a joint venture to develop cancer therapies using plant production systems.

Research is conducted in laboratories maintained by OMHS at the Mitchell Memorial Cancer Center.

"I have strongly supported this project since its inception," Lewis said in a news release.

Davis said the OCRP still hasn't received the 2007 appropriation.

"We're anticipating it at any time," he said. "It just takes a while to actually receive the money."

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