Cloning to Produce Human Proteins
- It took scientists 276 attempts to successfully clone a sheep
- Scientists created Dolly the Sheep because they were exploring the possibility of producing medicines in the milk of mammals
- A transgenic animal is bred that contains a foreign gene within its genome
- This foreign gene causes the animal to produce a useful compound which gets expressed within its milk
- Once this has been done the animal can be cloned to produce a whole herd or flock, all of which produce the same special milk
- This process is known as pharming
- Pharming has been used to produce:
- Antibodies for targeting cancer cells in humans
- Blood clotting factor IX for haemophilia (blood clotting disorder)
- Alpha-1-antitrypsin for cystic fibrosis sufferers
