Recombinant Drugs Made In Transgenic Goats

Tehran, Feb 24, IRNA - Researchers of Royan Institute have extracted recombinant drugs made in transgenic goats, a morning English-language paper quoted chairman of the institute on Monday. According to ˈIran Daily,ˈ Hamid Gourabi said that Royan intends to begin mass production by generating herds of transgenic goats. ˈResearchers produce different types of medicines, such as growth hormones and multiple sclerosis drugs, by purification of recombinant proteins from mammalian cell culture,ˈ he said adding that Royan experts use cows and goats as ˈbioreactorsˈ or animals that produce large amounts of a given recombinant protein in their milk.ˈ Gourabi further said by injecting factor IX gene in a goat genome, the human factor IX protein would be secreted in the goatˈs milk. Factor IX is one of the serine proteases of the coagulation system; it belongs to peptidase family S1. Deficiency of this protein causes hemophilia B. He noted that researchers at Royan have also produced tissue plasminogen activator in the milk of transgenic goats. Gourabi explained that tissue plasminogen activator or tPA is injected into the bloodstream through an intravenous line, stressing that tPA travels in the blood until it reaches the clot that is causing the stroke. ˈOnce there, it begins to break up the clot until blood can flow past it toward the affected areasˈ he said.ˈ Each vial of imported tPA costs $2,500.ˈ/end