Hayadan > A chicken or a futuristic drug factory

A chicken or a futuristic drug factory

Prescription eggs: Will genetic engineering turn chickens into drug factories?

Binimino Perlagrasso - hen and chicks. A 19th century painting by a painter who died in 1902 and is therefore in the public domain. From Wikimedia

Last summer, the Roslin Institute in Scotland - the place where Dolly the sheep was created - announced the new creation: genetically modified chickens that lay eggs with anti-cancer drugs. These eggs are the latest innovation in the field of biological agriculture, a field that is still in its infancy and may turn animals into cheap substitutes for pharmaceutical factories.
Using methods taken from the world of human gene therapy, researcher Helen Sang and her team assembled a virus that transfers transgenic genes into the chickens' DNA. The genes affect the protein in the white part of the egg and are able to fight melanoma. After that, the material will be extracted in the laboratory and processed into a medicine. If the process meets expectations, it could reduce production costs by up to 99 percent.