The Rural Voice, 1991-12, Page 14MIL.. •A'
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BESTARD
AGRICULTURAL PLACEMENTS
Human Resourcing .. .
SWINE SPECIALIST and
DAIRY SPECIALIST positions
available with progressive feed
companies. Good salary and
benefits being offered.
Send your resume or call in
CONFIDENCE to:
P.O. Box 1747,
St. Marys, Ontario
N4X 1C1
Bus. 519-284-4400
Fax. 519-284-4400
Confidentiality is Assured
BOLTON
FARM SEEDS
Dependable, Quality Pedigreed Seed
5 WAYS TO SAVE
ON YOUR 1992 SEED COSTS
1 – Order before Feb. 15, 1992
2 – Quantity of 100 bags or more
3 – Pick up your order
4 – Pay cash on delivery
5 – Early payments in Dec. or Jan.
Available for 1992 planting are
superior varieties of:
• OATS • WHITE BEANS
• BARLEY •SOYBEANS
• CEREAL MIXTURES
• FORAGE MIXTURES
• RED CLOVER
• HARMIL WINTER WHEAT
R.T. Bolton & Son
R.R. 1, Dublin, Ontario
519-527-0455 519-527-0559
At Auburn call Ralph Lubbers 526-7229
At Bluevale call Glen Warwick 357-3001
10 THE RURAL VOICE
HUMAN DRUGS COMING
FROM THE BARNYARD
Robert Mercer is editor of the
Broadwater Market Letter, a weekly
commodity and policy advisory letter
from Goodwood, Ontario LOC MAO.
Most of the news on biotechnology
has been about its application to crops,
especially advances with canola breed-
ing. Some of the first licenses under
the new Plant Breeders' Rights Act
are expected for wheat, soybeans, po-
tatoes, canola, roses, and chrysanthe-
mums.
However, a side of biotechnology
that has not been so widely reported is
that of transgenetics. Many of the
world's most sophisticated drugs
could soon be produced cheaply in the
milk of genetically altered farm anim-
als. One company, Gene Pharming
Europe B V, believes human pharma-
ceuticals extracted from the milk of its
transgenic cows — animals which
have been given a foreign gene —
could be commercially available as
early as 1997.
Pharmaceutical Proteins Ltd. (PPL)
of Scotland, also working on the pro-
cess known as "pharming," expects to
reach market in 1998.
Drugs can be made in the milk of
genetically -engineered farm animals at
a fraction of the cost of manufacture in
a traditional stainless steel bioreactor
which brews up a culture of cells, ac-
cording to news reports from Europe.
Output can be expanded simply by
breeding more animals. "In theory, it
is possible that three to five cows
could supply the whole world market
for Factor VIII (a drug used to treat
haemophiliacs)," says Otto Postma,
business manager at Gene Pharming,
the Dutch unit of California's private-
ly owned GenPharm International
Inc.
The market for Factor VIII is mini-
scule — about 250 grams a year —
but its price is $30 million a gram be-
cause it is so difficult to recover from
human blood plasma. The idea of
making drugs in milk was given a big
boost last month when three scientific
papers indicated for the first time that
pharming could work on a commercial
scale. Major drug firms are publicly
cautious, but privately keen to get a
foot in the door.
"Factories are constant and well -
regulated, but at $50 million a go, a
bioreactor is very expensive to build,"
Postma said. "With transgenic cattle,
basically all you need is a barn."
PPL's James said that even with the
very high levels of hygiene needed in
rearing transgenic livestock, the cost
of a drug -rich litre of milk should not
be more than $2.
And when it comes to purification,
getting the useful proteins out of milk
should be easier than separating them
from the complex mixture found in
bioreactors. Since most of the useful
proteins end up in the whey, the first
stage of purification is similar to
making cheese.
"Even with the most difficult
proteins to purify, we think the total
production cost will be well below
$100 a gram versus $500 to $1,000 for
conventional systems," Postma said.
A recent report from the U.S. said
world sales of biotechnology -derived
drugs topped $2.4 billion in 1990,
only a fraction of total sales of around
$180 billion. But the biotech sector is
growing fast as drug companies turn
their attention to complex diseases
such as cancer and AIDS.
Gene Pharming, which has bred
the world's first transgenic dairy calf,
is centring its research on cattle, seen
as the ideal living bioreactor because
of their prodigious milk yield.
PPL, concentrating on sheep and
goats, which have lower milk yields
but breed more quickly, has produced
very high yields of alpha-1-antitrypain
— a drug to treat emphysema — in
ewe's milk.
Those farmers who want to go
"pharming" as a new source of income
had better start working on a new set
of corporate doors. The barnyard may
never the same again.0