Interferon from Chicken Eggs
Multiple Sclerosis
Cancer
Transgenic Birds
Therapeutic Chicken Eggs
Scientists at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, have successfully bred genetically modified chickens that can produce eggs containing therapeutic proteins. The Roslin Institute is the acknowledged world leader in the research and development of mammalian cloning.
The Roslin Institute has bred five generations of birds that can produce useful levels of life-saving proteins in the egg-white or albumen. This could lead to the production of drugs that are cheaper and easier to make for the treatment of cancers and multiple sclerosis.
The process involves adding human genes to the chickens DNA to enable them to produce complex proteins.
Some of the birds have been engineered to lay eggs that contain miR24, a type of antibody with potential for treating malignant melanoma, a form of skin cancer. Others produce human interferon B-1A, which can be used to stop viruses replicating in cells.
Details of this work will be published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The project is a joint venture between the Roslin team, headed by Dr Helen Sang, US biotechnology firm Viragen and Oxford Biomedica.
But it could be another five years before patient trials get the go-ahead and ten years until a medicine is fully developed, the Roslin Institute cautioned.
Dr Helen Sang, Roslin Institute’s principal scientist on avian transgenic technology attended a reception at the British Consulate in New York in her honour.
References
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