The Animal Technology Institute of Taiwan last week succeeded in its second major breakthrough of the year, creating cloned pigs whose milk can dissolve blood clots, following up on their success two months ago of engineering pigs whose milk can aid hemophiliacs, researchers said yesterday.
The cloning process by which the institute engineered the pigs could someday save billions of dollars in the cost of producing medicines, researchers said yesterday.
"This is cutting-edge research, and there is not much cutting edge research in Taiwan," said Elizabeth Green Sah, director of Primasia Bioventures in Taipei. She believes that a number of foreign companies might be interested in working with the institute on the project.
The genetically engineered pigs, all female, were bred to produce milk that is rich in proteins used to fight diseases. Building a factory to do the same work would cost billions of dollars.
The key, however, is not the animals themselves so much as the process by which they are created, Yang Tien-Shuh (楊天樹), a researcher at the institute, said.
The specific breed of swine, whose milk is used to aid hemophiliacs, was engineered using genetic material from both human and pig cells. A multitude of other combinations are also said to be possible.
"Pharmaceutical companies can bring whatever they want to us and we can try it in the model," Yang said. "Not just proteins, but other molecules as well."
He credited fellow researcher Wu Shinn-Chih (吳信志) with making the breakthrough.
It will still take some time to bring the pigs to market, however. In order to pass inspection by the US Food and Drug Administration, the institute will need to prove that the proteins are exactly reproducible in every single batch of milk. So far, researchers have been unable to do this.
The institute hopes to find a private company to transfer this technology to, and has already won a four-year government grant to continue the research.
"This is the first year of development -- it will take four years to fully develop," said Tu Ching-Fu (杜清富), another researcher at the institute.
The government has already provided a four-year grant to allow researchers time to develop a veritable ‘farmacy’ of pigs whose milk will contain disease-fighting proteins.
The institute has already been successful in two creating pigs to fight three different variants of human ailments, and has also engineered pigs that produce milk rich in a protein that can keep other pigs from getting diarrhea, a common problem in farms across Taiwan due to the local climate.
A pig that will be used for human organ transplants is also being developed. The animal must first be made to stop producing the antigen that makes human bodies reject organs that are grown in pigs.
Companies overseas have also used genetic engineering to produce animals that make milk rich in specific proteins.
Canada-based Nexia Biotechnologies created a goat that produces milk rich in the protein needed to make spider webs, a lightweight, flexible material that is stronger than steel.
Spiders cannot be farmed like silk worms because of their aggressiveness. They would eat each other.
Nexia crossed genetic material from a spider gene with that of a goat to make the special milk. They then extract the web-making protein from the goat's milk and spin it into a fiber the company calls BioSteel, which it hopes to someday use in fishing lines, bullet-proof fabrics and other gear.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained