This crop may contain a COVID-19 treatment and be a boon for Kentucky farmers
Patrick Perry is research coordinator for the University of Kentucky’s Tobacco Research and Development Center, which operates Spindletop — a sprawling 2,200 acre farm on the city’s outskirts. Using Artemisia annua plants, also known as sweet wormwood, that Perry and his team harvested last year, UK is awaiting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin clinical trials to see if purified plant compounds and its leaves — dried and steeped in either tea or coffee — can treat someone with underlying health issues who contracts the virus.
When tested in the lab, the plant leaves, historically proven to have anti-viral qualities, showed “early signs in the lab of inhibiting COVID-19,” said Dr. Susanne Arnold, professor of medicine, radiation and associate director for clinical translation at UK’s Markey Cancer Center.
“We’re trying to make people remain asymptomatic, or if they’re symptomatic, not develop a more severe form of the disease,” Arnold said.
COVID-19 infections are soaring across the country, pushing many states to re-shutter businesses and to mandate masks, since there’s not yet a vaccine or treatment for the highly contagious disease. In recent days, Kentucky, too, has begun reporting an uptick in new infections, pushing Gov. Andy Beshear on Thursday to follow suit and mandate the wearing of facial coverings in public places. Statewide, the total number of cases exceeds 18,000 and more than 600 people have died.
Testing the Artemisia annua plant as a possible experimental therapy for people sick with COVID-19 is one of a handful of clinical trials currently underway at UK, though it’s the only one involving a plant cultivated in Kentucky farm fields.
The Artemisia annua plant originated in Asia, but lucky for Kentucky, its growing process is “very similar to tobacco,” Perry said as he cradled one of the seedlings Wednesday morning next to a flat-bed trailer carrying hundreds of others.
Like Artemisia annua, tobacco seeds like to be nurtured in greenhouses before the seedlings are transplanted to a field; both plants’ crop cycles last about 120 days; both require the same type of machinery for cultivation, and both plants are grown for their leaves, which need to be dried once harvested.
Perfecting this growth cycle and discerning the most effective Artemisia variety to treat COVID-19 is Perry’s job in this farm-to-therapy process. “Essentially what we’re trying to do is learn as much as possible about growing the plant using our production system to prepare Kentucky farmers in the event [there’s a] need for rapid growth expansion,” he said.
In other words, if the clinical trials are promising, more will need to be grown and fast. And the university will need to tap into a network of farmers across the state to help.
Read the full story from Lexington Herald Leader here.