This was published yesterday:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=2794852Would do you think about it?
If the link dose not work here is the full article:
Jan 14, 2007 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A team at the institute that cloned Dolly the sheep have made a genetically engineered chicken that produces cancer drugs in its eggs.
The chickens produce the cancer drugs in their egg whites, the team at the Roslin Biocentre in Edinburgh reported.
The drugs include a monoclonal
antibody themselves lab-engineered immune system proteins and a human immune system protein used to treat cancer and other conditions, the researchers report in the upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
These drugs are not easy to make in the lab. "Many human therapeutic proteins, such as monoclonal
antibodies, are produced in industrial bioreactors, but setting up such systems is both time-consuming and expensive," the researchers wrote.
Scientists have been trying to find good ways to turn animals into factories instead given that animals naturally make such proteins anyway.
Cattle, sheep and goats all have been genetically engineered to produce human proteins in their milk, including insulin and drugs to treat cystic fibrosis, but the Roslin team thought chickens, with their shorter life cycles and egg-laying prowess, also might be useful.
Helen Sang and colleagues at Roslin made the genetically engineered or transgenic hens by inserting the genes for the desired proteins into the hen's gene for ovalbumin, a protein that makes up half of egg whites.
They wanted to ensure the hens made the proteins in their egg whites and nowhere else.
The proteins they chose were miR24, a monoclonal
antibody with potential for treating melanoma, and human interferon b-1a, an immune system protein from a family of proteins that attacks tumors and viruses.
They used a virus to infect very early chicken embryos. The virus inserted the genetic material into the DNA of chick embryos in newly laid eggs.
The researchers hatched these chicks and found the male chicks who had indeed incorporated the new DNA in their semen.
ABC news 15th January 2007