The Rural Voice, 2001-01, Page 13(ALmAR)
Scrap Book
Chickens to be
engineered to
produce drugs
Could the laying barn be turned
into a drug factory?
' The Scottish scientists who
created Dolly, the world's first
cloned mammal, think it can and
have signed a deal with U.S.
biotech company Viragen Inc. to
breed chickens that produce life-
saving drugs in their eggs.
Dr. Helen Sang of Edinburgh's
Roslin Institute says the deal will
combine the technology used to
make Dolly the sheep with
Viragen's expertise in developing
anti-cancer proteins.
"The essence of this project.is
to create chickens which produce
eggs containing new drugs to treat
many serious diseases, including
cancer," said Sang.
Roslin scientists are already
developing cows, sheep, goats and
rabbits to provide proteins for
drugs in their milk. Birds,
however, provide a cheaper, faster
and virtually unlimited production
process through laying eggs.
Dolly was produced by taking
the nucleus out of a cell from the
mammary gland of an adult animal
and fusing it, using an electrical
current, into another sheep egg cell
from which the nucleus had been
removed. That same technology
will allow scientists, for the first
time, to control precisely where
and how genes are inserted into
hens.
It's estimated that the
genetically modified chickens will
annually lay about 250 eggs
containing proteins for.drugs.
The Florida -based Viragen is
collaborating with Britain's Cancer
Research Campaign to develop a
vaccine for the treatment of breast,
ovarian and colorectal cancer.
Another British company,
TranXenoGen Inc., which
specializes in human therapeutic
proteins in chicken eggs is also
working on a project similar to the
Roslin experiment.0
— Source: Reuters News Agency
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