Joy of Christmas

A St. Catharines, Ont., drug company plans to turn the needles of up to 500,000 Christmas trees into the basic building block of a desperately sought anti-flu drug.

Biolyse Pharma Corp. says it will use the needles as the source of an element used to make Tamiflu, a drug that many countries, including Canada, are stockpiling in case the H5N1 avian flu virus starts spreading around the world.

If a pandemic does strike, the development could be critically important because a worldwide shortage of the compound shikimic acid is slowing production of the medicine.

“Shikimic acid exists in all plant life, from bacteria to the maple tree in your front yard,” Biolyse chemist and co-founder Claude Mercure said.

“There’s no reason for there to be a shortage of it, but there is and if there is a pandemic, we’re going to need all we can get,” he said.

Most of the world’s supply of the element is made from the seed of star anise, the fruit of a tree grown in China. As demand for Tamiflu has soared, the price of shikimic acid from that source has spiked from $45 a kilogram to more than $600 in the last year.

There are also fears China will ban its export in order to secure its own supplies. Shikimic acid is used to make the synthetic element oseltamivir, marketed by pharmaceutical giant Roche Laboratories Inc. as Tamiflu. Studies show the drug stops the flu virus from implanting in cells.

The World Health Organization has stockpiled 30 million doses of the drug to use in the early stages of a flu outbreak and is urging governments to build up their own arsenals. So far, the bird flu virus, found in chickens and migrating birds in Asia and the fringes of Europe, has killed 71 people in Southeast Asia and China.

Though shikimic acid exists in many plants, not all plants have enough to make extracting it commercially worthwhile. Pine, spruce and fir needles, however, can yield as much as 40 grams per kilogram of needles.

“That’s commercially viable,” said Biolyse president Brigitte Kiecken.

Gro-Bark (Ontario) Ltd., which has the contract to haul away Christmas trees in the Halton-Toronto area, has agreed to donate the needles to Biolyse.

“This is the ultimate recycling story, using recycled Christmas trees to help protect people from a pandemic with the potential to kill millions,” said Gro-Bark president Bill McKague.

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