Holy cow! Cloning provides fodder for pharmaceuticals
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
WASHINGTON, JAN 21: The cow is of the bovine ilk; One end is moo and the other milk.Ogden Nash's rather simplistic ditty may need a revision. There will be more now to the cow than just moo and milk.Adding to the rapid and astonishing progress in the field of cloning since the making of Dolly one year ago, researchers in Boston announced today that they had successfully created two identical, genetically engineered calves which can produce medicines for humans in their milk. George and Charlie - as the Texas-born calves have been named - are a new breed of the so-called pharm animals who presage production of drugs in milk. The cloned calves were genetically altered in advance so as to fit in an extra gene in all their cells. The introduction of this marker gene suggests that it is possible to manipulate the genetic make-up of cows to help create medicine in their milk. In fact, scientists have already begun breeding these pharm cows.The cloning-engineering was accomplished by Dr James Robl at the
University of Massachusetts and Dr Steven Stice of Advanced Cell Technologies and reported on Tuesday at a meeting in Boston of the International Embryo Transfer Society. Robl said his team had already created several cow clone embryos containing the gene for a protein called human serum albumin. These pioneering pharm calves containing the first medically useful human genes, were right now developing inside the wombs of surrogate mother cows. Dr Robl declined to say when and where these calves are to be born. Human serum albumin, normally obtained from human blood donors, is injected into injured patients who have suffered blood loss to increase their blood volume. Robl and his team say it is possible to extract the albumin from milk and sell it as a substitute. Holsteins Charlie and George are not the first pharm animals. The creator of Dolly, Dr Ian Wilmut, had already followed it up with Polly and Molly, two cloned sheep carrying extra copies of a gene called Factor IX which will allow them to make
a blood clotting agent in their milk.Wilmut's team is waiting for Polly and Molly to lactate to find if the milk contains the factor. If it does, the extract could be a boon for haemophiliacs. Scientists say the cow is an ideal animal for such genetic engineering because it produces much more milk than any other animal. In many ways, this thinking amplifies the already exalted status cow has in Hinduism, a sentiment celebrated in such mythical animals like Kamadhenu.By implication, today's advances suggest it will be possible to use similar techniques to grow engineered animals containing cells and organs than can be transplanted into humans. Cows can become virtual drug and organ factories. George and Charlie were created (after only 50 tries) with a technique far more efficient than the cloning of Dolly which took 277 attempts. While Dolly was cloned from a cell taken from an adult mammal, Charlie and George were cloned from cells taken from foetuses, an easier method. Tuesday's stunning experimentcomes close on the heels of the announcement last week by a Chicago doctor that he was ready to clone humans to help infertile couples. Several scientists expressed reservation about that but advances with Polly, Molly, George and Charlie have brought a buzz of excitement in the scientific world. Human clones not taboo under Judaism Jewish law does not rule out human cloning, a rabbi has told Legislators in Jerusalem as Israel began tackling an issue that has triggered a moral debate in the Western world. US President Bill Clinton and Christian leaders are seeking a ban on the procedure. ``Unlike the formal Christian position, Judaism maintains that cloning might be allowed, under strict supervision,'' said Rabbi Mordechai Halprin who testified before Parliament's science committee as a representative of the chief Rabbinate yesterday.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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