The Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a vaccine for lymphoma from the tobacco plant. Follicular B cell lymphoma, also known as Hodgkin’s lymphoma, is a specific type of chronic cancer which is diagnosed in over 15,000 people each year and there is no cure for it. Chemotherapy is currently the only treatment for it and the side effects of the chemotherapy make it unpopular with patients.  
The Researchers at Stanford University and Large Scale Biology Corp. said that genetically altered tobacco plants were used to produce a cancer vaccine.  They infected tobacco leaves with a virus laced with a gene from the cancer and they found this triggered the plant into making antibodies of the type that are found on the tumors of patients.

The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the same process has had success with mice and successfully cured the cancer in them. In the first human study, researchers found that the vaccine could trigger an immune response in the body helping to kick start the patient’s immune system into attack the cancer.

Ronald Levy, lead author of the study and head of oncology at Stanford said that more than 70 % of the patients who already had the disease were tested with the vaccine and they developed an immune response with no significant side effects.