A new venture that could potentially save thousands of lives and millions of dollars by accelerating development and production of animal and human vaccines won the $15,000 grand prize recently in the 10th annual Big Bang! Business Plan Competition organized by MBA students of the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) Graduate School of Management.

The process, conceived by a group of UC Davis students, substitutes tobacco plants for conventional manufacturing methods that rely on chicken eggs and cell culture, to cut development time for new vaccines from six months to as little as six weeks, according to Lucas Arzola, a doctoral candidate in chemical engineering who headed the winning team, Inserogen.