Potent potato diabetes vaccine

Press embargo date: Monday September 28th, 5.00pm

WARNING: This document, and the Nature Biotechnology papers to which it refers, are provided to you in confidence. Anyone dealing in securities using material, non-public information contained in this document or in advance copies of Nature Biotechnology's content may be guilty of insider trading under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

***PLEASE DO NOT REDISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT*** ------------------------------------------------ Potent potato diabetes vaccine

Research paper p. 934

Scientists have taken another step in making potatoes that could one day help prevent people from developing diabetes. Transgenic potatoes that produce large amount of autoantigens have been suggested as potential vaccines for suppressing the development of diabetes, a condition that affects 16 million people in the US alone. These vaccines would work by downregulating immune cells in a diabetic's body that attack specialized insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The problem is getting enough autoantigen into the body to saturate the immune system and suppress autoimmune responses.

In this issue, William Langridge and colleagues create a potato-based insulin vaccine that is almost 100 times more potent than previous vaccines in downregulating diabetes in mice. They show that transgenic potato plants expressing cholera toxin B subunit linked to insulin, a major diabetes autoantigen, reduce inflammation of pancreatic islet cells and delay the progression of diabetes in mice fed on a potato diet. The cholera toxin--insulin vaccine was significantly more effective in suppressing insulitis and diabetes disease than a comparative transgenic potato vaccine expressing insulin autoantigen alone. The authors suggest that cholera toxin B could be used to facilitate autoantigen delivery in plant vaccines for many other autoimmune diseases.

Contact (Author) Dr. William H.R. Langridge Center for Molecular Biology and Gene Therapy School of Medicine Loma Linda Univeristy Loma Linda, CA 02350 Tel: 909 824 4300 ext. 81362 Fax: 909 478 4177 Email: blangridge@ccmail.llu.edu ********************************************************************** NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY REQUEST FORM (Newswise release)

Please fax or e-mail this form to Angela Atkins Fax: 1 (212) 696-9006 E-mail: a.atkins@natureny.com Tel: 1 (212) 726-9200 #3. Potent potato diabetes vaccine (Research paper p. 934)

I WOULD LIKE TO A RECEIVE COPIES OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE:

YOUR NAME:_________________________________ ORGANIZATION:___________________________ E-MAIL:________________________________ PHONE:________________________________ FAX:__________________________________