2007-06-12 | permalink

Scientists dish up GE rice vaccine to fight cholera

The bacteria that cause cholera infect the gut and bloody the stool of victims. Roughly 200,000 cases occur each year in Africa, India and Russia, among other places. The microbe that causes it—Vibrio cholerae—travels from host to host in water and on washed food, where it can persist for almost a week. Vaccines exist but provide short-lived protection; some require refrigeration from when they are brewed in an industrial vat to the moment they are injected into a patient. Now Japanese researchers have created a strain of rice that can act as a vaccine and last for more than a year and a half at room temperature.

• Scientific American, USA: Scientists dish up rice vaccine to fight cholera
• France24, France: Colera rice vaccine offers new hope to poor nations
• Technology Review, USA: Vaccinating with Rice