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.
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