Dental team tweaks DNA to improve plant-based medicines

Henry Daniell, a professor in the departments of Biochemistry and Pathology in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Dental Medicine, has found great success in using genetic engineering to coax lettuce and tobacco plants to produce foreign proteins in their leaves, be they from a polio virus to make vaccines, a wormwood plant to synthesize malaria drugs, or the human clotting factor to make a hemophilia treatment.