One of the world's biggest cigarette makers is working on a plant-based coronavirus vaccine

The tobacco company behind brands like Lucky Strike says it may be able to create a coronavirus vaccine using tobacco plants.

British American Tobacco (BAT), maker of cigarette brands Dunhill, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, and Lucky Strike, has said that it has a potential coronavirus vaccine in development.

The company claims the vaccine will be created using tobacco plants, saying that "tobacco plants offer the potential for faster and safer vaccine development compared with conventional methods”.

BAT said Kentucky BioProcessing (KBP) - its US biotech subsidiary - has already moved to pre-clinical testing of the vaccine and will work on it on a not-for-profit basis.

'Tobacco plants cannot host pathogens which cause human disease'

The move may seem unusual, given that BAT ordinarily uses tobacco plants to manufacture cigarettes - widely proven to cause health risks in those who smoke them.

However, KBP, which BAT purchased in 2014, had previously worked on a treatment for Ebola. BAT said that the work it was doing was “potentially safer [than conventional vaccine technology], given that tobacco plants cannot host pathogens which cause human disease."