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GM chickens
Why is it in news?
- Recent study found that genetically modified chickens that produce human proteins in their eggs can offer a cost-effective method of manufacturing drugs widely used for treating cancer and other diseases.
- The research, which initially focused on producing high quality proteins for use in scientific research, found the drugs work at least as well as the same proteins produced using existing methods.
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- No adverse affect: High quantities of the proteins can be recovered from each egg using a simple purification system and there are no adverse effects on the chickens themselves, which lay eggs as normal.
- cheap method: It provide solution by using chickens as a cheap method of producing high quality drugs for use in research studies and, potentially one day, in patients.
- Use of eggs: Eggs are already used for growing viruses that are used as vaccines, such as the flu jab.
- Anti-cancer drug: This new approach is different because the therapeutic proteins are encoded in the chicken’s DNA and produced as part of the egg white.
- Comparison with existing methods:
- Protein-based drugs, which include antibody therapies such as Avastin and Herceptin, are widely used for treating cancer and other diseases.
- For some of these proteins, the only way to produce them with sufficient quality involves mammalian cell culture techniques, which are expensive and have low yields.
- Other methods require complex purification systems and additional processing techniques, which raise costs.
- This egg approach is efficient and produces better yields.
Source
The Hindu