Project GreenVax Makes Vaccines Out of Tobacco Plants Instead of Eggs

Did you get a H1N1 flu shot? You can thank unhatched chicken eggs for that. But a new venture dubbed Project GreenVax aims to take animals completely out of the equation by making vaccines with tobacco plants.

In traditional influenza vaccine production, scientists inject the virus into fluid surrounding a chicken embryo. After many days of incubation, the eggs are opened and the virus is removed and purified to make a vaccine. It's a slow process--it takes two weeks to make an egg-based...