Stanford University researchers are using tobacco plants to grow key components of a cancer vaccine, turning the plants into factories for an antibody chemical specific to the cancerous cells that cause follicular B-cell lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Once a patient’s cancer cells are isolated in the laboratory, the gene responsible for producing the antibody is extracted and added to a tobacco virus. When the virus infects the tobacco, the gene is added to the plants’ cells, which start producing large quantities of the antibody. These antibodies are put back into a patient to “prime” the body’s immune system to attack any cell carrying them.