GTC Biotherapeutics (fka GTCB)

[gym gravity]

Google alert for "transgenic goats"

Best PR we've had in a while...mentions ATryn and goes on at length about the malaria vaccine, but fails to say "GTCB". Does give a direct pump to Pharming.

Requires a login, so I cut and pasted for all my friends.

Using animal clones to make super drugs

Story by GATONYE GATHURA
Publication Date: 1/31/2007
No animal, except those accompanying the biblical Noah in the Ark, has ever generated as much buzz as Dolly the sheep — the first mammal to be cloned.

Named after singer Dolly Parton, the clone has since died. Its birth 10 years ago was the first step towards creating animals that manufacture designer medicines for human beings.

Lambs feed on a goat in Switzerland after its owner realized that their mother did not have enough milk for them. Medicine processed from genetically engineered goats could be used by patients within the next five months. Photo/ File
Last week, scientists at the organisation which made Dolly, the Roslyn Institute in Scotland, announced the creation of the world’s first designer chicken that produces cancer drugs in its eggs.

These chicken are not the first modified animals to be turned into pharmaceutical factories. But they are significant because, unlike bigger mammals, they can multiply fast, hence produce more drugs.

However, it will take some time before one places an order for “well done” eggs that also treat cancer or malaria. This is because the medicinal components of “pharmed” egg or milk are not available to the body directly. They will be extracted, processed and packaged at a manufacturing plant.

The current production of genetically-engineered pharmaceutical products is too expensive and slow. Consequently, it is thought that “pharming” the drugs in animals could be faster and cheaper.

The second reason why “pharmed” cancer drugs from chicken are still several years away is because of stringent tests and registration procedures that they are expected to go through before they are made available to patients..

However, drugs processed from genetically engineered goats could be used by patients within the next five months.

Modified to include human genes

Last June, the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) approved a drug produced by genetically modified goats.

The pioneering drug, an anti-clotting agent for people with a rare inherited disease, is made from the milk of goats whose DNA has been modified to incorporate human genes.

The drug, ATryn, sets a precedent for use of modified animal proteins. Despite protests from animal welfare campaigners, the technology is guaranteed to take off.

Another biotech company, Dutch firm Pharming, is close to bringing smart drugs into the market. Last month, it applied to the European Medicines Agency — the body that approved ATryn — for a second drug derived from transgenic animals.

Its drug, Rhucin, is intended to treat hereditary angioedema — characterised by painful and sometimes fatal swelling of soft tissues.

Like with other cutting edge technologies, Africa lacks the capacity to invest in this research. Yet investors in research and development (R&D) are unlikely to put their money in diseases which promise little returns.

Working on malaria vaccine

But Kenyans will be happy to hear that for more than eight years, scientists at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have been working on a malaria vaccine that could be mass produced in goat milk.

In a report published by the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences a few years ago, scientists developed mice that could secrete an experimental malaria vaccine into their milk.

When the purified, candidate vaccine was injected into monkeys, it protected four out of five of them from a lethal dose of malaria parasites. In comparison, six out of seven un-vaccinated animals had to be treated for virulent malaria.

“A vaccine must not only be effective, it must also be cheap to manufacture, particularly for poor countries. Using transgenic animals to achieve both ends is an exciting possibility. Several goats could produce enough vaccine for the whole of Africa,” says lead researcher Anthony Stowers.

Preliminary experiments that have not been published suggest the procedure works well in larger animals such as goats and cows, offering hope to Kenya where malaria remains a major killer.

Casting the net much further, scientists have found that genetically modified plants can produce vaccines and drugs for human and animal illnesses, ranging from colon cancer to traveller’s diarrhoea to tooth decay. This is called biopharming.

Technology developers believe that using foods to deliver vaccines could permit the latter to be consumed directly by humans or animals, eliminating the need for purification of the vaccine strain and the hazards associated with injections.

Plants used to develop vaccines include maize, spinach, tobacco, lettuce, tomato, soybeans and potatoes.

Imagine a field of potatoes. And that each tuber contains proteins from the deadly cholera-causing bacteria. Although this may sound alarming, such potatoes were actually developed by researchers at the University of Rostock in Germany to deliver life-saving vaccines.

The potatoes contain a bacterial protein that researchers hope will make the uptake of orally administered vaccines more efficient. It is hoped the “cholera potato” will pave the way for more effective delivery of oral vaccines produced in other transgenic plants.

American company ProdiGene has also conducted field tests with maize engineered to produce Trypsin for diabetes and a vaccine for hepatitis B.

Biopharming is not new. Many common medicines, such as the new one for malaria, Coartem, Codeine, morphine, bulk laxatives and anti-cancer drugs Taxol and Vincristine have for a long time been purified by plants.

But biopharming’s great promise lies in using gene-splicing or genetic modification, techniques to make old plants do radically new things.

Last year, the European Union launched a project to make pharmaceutically useful products in genetically modified crops basically for developing countries.

The consortium, called Pharma-Planta, wants to produce vaccines and other treatments for major diseases, such as HIV/Aids, rabies and TB.

The EU has put 12 million Euros into the project, which is projected to start clinical trials by 2009. The first product — possibly grown in maize — is likely to be an antibody that can block HIV transmission. It would be incorporated into a microbicidal cream that could be applied on human sex organs, especially females ones.

Freely licensed in poor countries

The second product will probably be a post-bite vaccine for rabies, which is still a significant killer in Kenya. The project will focus on areas of greatest benefit to developing nations. Any plant “platforms” that are found to work particularly well will be freely licensed in those countries.

Thirty-nine laboratories in 11 European countries will work together, with input from researchers in South Africa, where HIV/Aids is a major public health issue.

One such approach is already being used successfully in Cuba to create human proteins in tobacco plants which allow the purification of Hepatitis B vaccine.

Scientists see great potential for reducing costs of production through biopharming. Energy for product synthesis comes from the sun, and the primary raw materials are water and carbon dioxide. If it becomes necessary to expand production, it is much easier to plant a few additional hectares than to build a new bricks-and-mortar manufacturing facility.

Concept ‘insensitive and abusive’

Back to animals, not everybody is happy with the turning of “innocent” creatures into drug factories. Animal rights groups say the concept is insensitive and abusive.

However, even protesters might approve of research by Minos BioSystems, a British biotech company which proposes to create house-flies with human genes to produce human blood protein.

The Roslyn Biocentre team thought chicken, with their shorter life cycles and egg-laying prowess, could be the most useful.

They used a virus to infect chicken embryos. The virus inserted genetic material into the DNA of chick embryos in newly-laid eggs.

Researchers hatched these chicks and found out that the males had, indeed, incorporated the new DNA in their semen.

The cockerels were then bred with normal hens and the resulting chicks screened to see which ones carried the two new genes. The researchers have now bred several hundred chicks that can produce the desired proteins.

http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=39&newsid=90698