Transgenic chickens used to manufacture proteins

Researchers at the Roslin BioCentre in Scotland have advanced a program to use transgenic chickens to create new drugs for a variety of ailments. By injecting genes for certain proteins into the hen's gene for ovalbumin, a protein that makes up more than half of egg whites, the chickens produced those therapeutic proteins in their egg whites. A new generation of transgenic therapies are in the pipeline, many using goats to create a new way to manufacture meds in their milk. Backers say that using farm animals to develop drugs would be much less expensive than current manufacturing methods.

"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.

- read the report on the chicken research from Xinhuanet

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