Scientists may someday be able to use genetically modified hens to produce
drugs in the whites of their eggs to treat cancer, arthritis and other diseases
such as bird flu, a report released Tuesday reveals.
The technology "signifies an important advance in the use of farm animals for
pharmaceutical production," the scientists said in a statement.
Researchers led by Helen Sang of the Roslin BioCentre in Edinburgh, Scotland,
created transgenic hens by inserting the genes for desired pharmaceutical
proteins into the hen's gene for ovalbumin, a protein that makes up 54 percent
of egg whites.
"With the demand for therapeutic protein drugs increasing, the efficient
generation of transgenic hens that produce functional protein drugs at high
levels in egg whites marks an important step in the development of this
technology," according to a statement released by the Proceedings of the
Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, which published the research
in its online edition.
Traditional methods for producing therapeutic proteins such as antibodies
used to treat cancer and arthritis are expensive. Farm animals could produce
them faster and cheaper, the thinking goes.
All the egg whites from these hens contained miR24, an antibody with
potential for treating malignant melanoma. The whites also packed human
interferon b-1a, an antiviral drug.
(Agencies)