GM chickens lay cancer-fighting eggs


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A common breed of hens known as ISA browns were genetically modified such that they lay eggs containing certain cancer-fighting drugs, according to a new study published in the upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Helen Sang and colleagues at the Roslin Biocentre in Edinburgh where the famous closed Dolly the sheep was born successfully introduced an artificial gene that causes production of a human protein into the embryo inside an egg through a viral vehicle.

The genetics of the engineered chickens, which can produce up to 300 eggs a year, seems stable and each of five generations of hens has produced eggs with the targeted drugs.

The drugs include a monoclonal antibody and a human immune system protein that can be used to treat cancer, in the current case, MS and skin cancer.

The drugs in the genetically modified eggs, which would otherwise be hard to manufacture in laboratories, can be extracted and prepared to treat the targeted diseases.

"Many human therapeutic proteins, such as monoclonal antibodies, are produced in industrial bioreactors, but setting up such systems is both time-consuming and expensive," the authors of the study wrote.

The researchers in collaboration with Viragen ( Scotland) Ltd., a subsidiary of the U.S. biotechnology company Viragen and Oxford Biomedica Ltd have bred several hundred chickens that can produce the desired proteins.

While researchers were excited about the results, opponents of genetically modified organisms showed concern over the research.

Pete Riley, from GM Freeze, which highlights concerns about genetic modification of food and animals, was cited by Scotsman.com as saying ¡°We are very concerned about this from an animal-welfare point of view."

"Dolly the sheep had a very short life and suffered serious health problems," he said. "There are some major moral and ethical issues that need to be debated."

Riley was cited as saying that scientists needed to find ways to prevent diseases rather than use GM to find treatments.

Many farm animals including sheep, goats, cattle and rabbits have been genetically modified earlier by several companies to produce medicinal proteins. But the drugs from such sources are not hard to isolate and there are some moral and ethical issues over use of GM animals for making therapeutic proteins.