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ARGENTINA – GM CALVES PRODUCED
Argentine cow clones to produce insulin in milk
18 April 2007. Source: Reuters via AgNet
BUENOS AIRES -- Argentine scientists on Tuesday were cited as saying they had created four cloned and genetically modified calves capable of producing human insulin in their milk, a step they said could cut the cost of treating diabetes.
The newborn Jersey heifers - who the scientists have named Patagonia 1, 2, 3 and 4 - will start producing the human hormone when they reach adulthood, said the biotechnology company behind the project, Bio Sidus.
Marcelo Criscuolo, managing director, was quoted as saying, "This model of a genetically modified cow is a model that allows us to produce large quantities of products at very low cost." Criscuolo added that insulin produced by cows would be at least 30 percent cheaper.
"The cattle-ranching know-how we have in Argentina has really given us a startling advantage in generating the technology," he said at a news conference.
To produce pharmaceutical products from cow's milk, scientists insert the human gene of interest into an embryo before implanting it into a surrogate mother cow. In this case they used a gene for insulin.
Once milk is obtained from the genetically modified cow, it will be purified and refined to extract the insulin. Similar techniques have already been used to produce human proteins in goats and cows.
Bio Sidus started with a cattle fetus taken from a slaughterhouse, removing selected cells from it and splicing in the human insulin gene.
Then they used cloning techniques to take the genetically modified nuclei from these cells and fuse them into cattle eggs. The cloning process starts the egg dividing as if it had been fertilized and they were able to implant four embryos in four surrogate mother cows.
Scientists hope the insulin produced in their milk could be on the market in the next couple of years.
There are about 200 million diabetics worldwide, and the Argentine scientists said just 25 insulin-producing cows would be enough for Argentina's 1.5 million diabetics.
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