Alfalfa - it's no longer just the nickname for one of the Little Rascals or the stringy vegetable layered in your sandwich.
Biodesign Institute professor Guy Cardineau is genetically engineering the alfalfa plant to produce cheaper anemia and cancer medications.
It's an effort he's pursuing in collaboration with the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey under ASU's first research partnership with a Mexican university.
ASU and Tec de Monterrey are starting the project together, and ASU chose the university as its partner because it is the largest private higher-education system in Mexico.
Cardineau's research seeks to produce recombinant human granulocyte colony stimulating factor (rhG-CSF), a protein used in treating anemia and cancer.
RhG-CSF is already produced commercially through bacterial fermentation in E. Coli and in cultures of Chinese hamster ovary cells.
By growing the protein in plant tissue instead, Cardineau hopes to cut cost of production by tenfold to fiftyfold.
"We think the cost of protein produced in plants is far less than protein produced in other systems," he said. "The trade-off is how much protein we can make, and if we can be competitive."
The advantage of using alfalfa is it's a perennial crop that can be cut and re-harvested over and over again for up to five years, Cardineau said.
"It's sort of like cutting your lawn," he said. "You cut your grass, it grows again."
Alfalfa's also rich in protein, as evidenced by its abundant presence in most dry pet foods, he said.
But whether or not alfalfa can produce as much of the rhG-CSF protein as E. Coli or the hamster cells is a question that still needs to be answered, Cardineau said.
In the project, ASU researchers will use recombinant DNA techniques to transform the plant's genetic code, tricking it into producing the rHG-CSF protein.
Tec de Monterrey researchers, led by professor Manuel Zertuche, will grow the alfalfa in Mexico.
After genetic modifications, the resulting plants will look the same as regular alfalfa and will still be edible. But if it progresses to the commercial stages it will be manufactured in tablet form, not sold in the produce section of grocery stores, Cardineau said.
Tablets can be produced after the plant is freeze-dried and ground to a powder form, he said.
The two-year experiment received $100,000 from a joint fund between ASU and Tec de Monterrey set up by the presidents of both universities.
Cardineau's project is just as much an experiment in bioengineering as it is in collaborating biotechnology projects across border lines, he said.
It's often difficult to obtain grants for international projects, he said, and the alfalfa project will test the waters of funding an ASU-Mexico partnership.
The ASU Research and Economic Affairs Office hails the international research as a collaboration that will benefit both institutions and nations.
"This program will advance interinstitutional cooperation in science, technology and scholarly activities that have a direct application in industry or government," said Stephen Goodnick, associate vice president for research at ASU.
A biotech project led by ASU professor Willem Vermaas will also collaborate with Tec de Monterrey.
That project seeks to extract pigments from cyanobacteria like blue-green algae without killing the organisms.
Reach the reporter at annalyn.censky@asu.edu
