During the most recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa, health-care workers treated some sick patients by injecting them with plasma—the translucent part of the blood—taken from individuals who had survived the disease. In the absence of an approved drug to treat patients, the hope was that protective proteins in the donor plasma would help recipients fight the disease and recover.
A biotech company wants to use this same approach to treat a variety of infectious diseases, with one key difference: cows, not humans, will be the plasma donors.
South Dakota-based SAB Biotherapeutics has genetically engineered cows to produce large quantities of human antibodies that could be used to treat a wide range of infectious diseases.
SAB Biotherapeutics of South Dakota has genetically engineered cattle to produce large quantities of human antibodies—proteins that help remove harmful foreign pathogens from the body—in a rapid fashion that could be used to treat patients suffering from infectious diseases like Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Ebola, and influenza. The World Health Organization recently recognized the company’s approach among six promising new technology platforms that could help respond to disease outbreaks worldwide….
Source: MIT Tech Review