Monday, November 18, 2019

Scientists Engineer Chickens to Make Cancer Treating Drugs



https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2019/01/30/scientists-engineer-chickens-to-make-cancer-drugs-10-times-cheaper-to-produce-than-factory-made-medicines/
Related:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46993649

Chickens that lay eggs containing drugs that could treat cancer and other diseases now exist. We live in the future. Researchers have engineered chickens to lay eggs that contain drugs for some cancers. These eggs are made to produce proteins and chemicals to treat bodies with diseases that are caused by a lack of sufficient these proteins and chemicals. This was successfully done by Dr. Lissa Herron, of Roslin Technologies in Edinburgh and her colleagues by inserting a human gene that normally produces a specific protein in humans into the chickens’ DNA that produces egg whites. The eggs that are laid by these genetically modified chickens cost about 10 to 100 times less than pharmaceutically produced drugs. Because chickens can lay up to 300 eggs per year and 3 eggs are enough to produce a dose of the desired drug, drugs will be able to be produced in commercial quantities.

ISA Brown poule chicken

I think that this article is really bizarre. Genetically modified chickens that lay eggs that contain “anti-cancer” drugs is very interesting to me. It’s a very efficient way to produce these kinds of drugs, but I am sure that the ethics of this kind of production is controversial in some domains. As for me, as long as the chickens are not harmed or treated poorly, I am ok with this mode of drug production. Thus, I am glad that the article specifies that these genetically modified chickens are treated humanely and are apparently pampered.

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