Producing Protein Therapeutics: Could Water Buffalo Be The Next Big Thing?

Scientists are using animals’ milk to produce therapeutics for humans. Manipulating the use of transgenic animal milk for drugs has been researched for 20 years. The milk is purified of the proteins and used as a drug. Only two drugs have been FDA approved since the beginning of its research, but they have found a new animal, the water buffalo, that would be a good model organism for this area of research.

 I think it is very interesting that the protein can solely be expressed in the milk of the animal. This is confirmed by co-expressing the GFP protein with a protein of interest, and therefore the fusion protein can be fluorescently detected wherever it may be present. This is the same protein as we saw in “GFP Bunny” by Eduardo Kac, who requested an albino bunny to glow green for his transgenic artwork.

If this mechanism of therapeutics is deemed successful within the next decade, and would be deemed a good mechanism of producing a drug, how would vegans feel about this? Perhaps some viewers can weigh in.

Here is a list of animals whose milk is currently being used to create drugs:

Here is the link to the article:

http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i19/Producing-Protein-Therapeutics-Water-Buffalo.html