Steve, thought this might have implications for GZTC. Any idea if the company is working on something similar or might have some other tricks up its sleeve? I guess you probably couldn't say if you knew. Anyway, this certainly underscores the incredible potential of transgenics.
LONDON (AP) - Scientists who helped engineer the first cloned sheep are close to generating human blood plasma from animals, a newspaper reported Sunday.
PPL Therapeutics, the Scottish firm that helped Edinburgh's Roslin Institute clone a sheep, is developing the means to replace the plasma genes of sheep and cows with the human equivalent, according to The Observer, a respected weekly paper.
The animals' milk will then contain the key elements of human blood plasma, including albumen, clotting factors and antibodies, the newspaper reported.
PPL told the paper it plans to rear herds of the animals and manufacture plasma from the proteins extracted from their milk.
PPL hopes the process will be ready ``in months,'' The Observer quoted Dr. Ron James, the firm's managing director, as saying.
Only 5 percent of Britain's population regularly gives blood. Genetically modified animals could produce 10,000 times more plasma a year than a human donor.
James told the newspaper that the results would be of ``great medical benefit to man.''
Britain's National Blood Service was more cautious.
``Using animal-grown human plasma is fine in theory,'' an unidentified spokeswoman told The Observer, ``but until the clinical trials are compete you can never be sure that you have the full plasma equivalent, or whether the animals will pass on diseases to man.''
The announcement by scientists at the Roslin Institute in February that they had created a cloned sheep using cells from another sheep's udder triggered an ethical storm and led several governments - including the Clinton administration - to introduce legislation that would limit the uses of cloning. |
