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Engineered Hens Lay Cancer-Fighting Eggs
celardore writes "Hens that lay eggs containing cancer-fighting proteins have been developed in Scotland. While not themselves cancer-antagonistic, the proteins can be used to create drugs that have cancer-fighting potential. The hens are, in effect, factories for cancer drugs. It is still unknown whether the resulting drugs would work in practice, and clinical trials are 5 years off. This research was conducted by the Roslin Institute, the ones responsible responsible for Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal."
The protein or the cancer?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I've never understood all the fuss about the chicken and egg problem - they both taste great.
The hens are, in effect, factories for cancer drugs. It is still unknown whether the resulting drugs would work in practice, and clinical trials are 5 years off.
Clinical trials are 5 years off? What are they, chicken?
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green cancer fighting eggs and ham...
It is a cancer word that uncontrollably reproduces.
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Laying an egg is a job where no engineer has gone before. :P
This has the potential to be a great advance in medicine and science related to cancer. Those of you who are trying for funny or sarcastic posts...would you rather have an option other than dying if you were diagnosed with cancer? I know that some folks out there won't be happy due to manipulation of "God's creatures" but if my wife, parents, or me was diagnosed with cancer, I would want as many options available as possible. This really is a potentially huge step in fighting cancers. It is especially important when you consider how few options there are in fighting most types of cancer. Chemotherapy is a long shot most times and makes you sick as hell before you MIGHT get better. Surgery has many shortfalls besides being invasive. This could be a huge step in making cancer a problem with much better odds of beating.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs."
What?
For one thing, it's easier to keep egg whites contained.
You get a lot of egg white at once. Chickens lay lots of large eggs, and the ones allowed to grow up to be chickens lay lots more large eggs. Each egg contains more white than the average petri dish can hold.
It's also simpler to feed a chicken than to feed a petri dish.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
A chicken and an egg were lying in bed, the chicken sitting back, leaning against the headboard with a big grin on his face.
The egg, looking quite angry and disappointed, rolled out of bed and said, "well I guess we answered that question!".
Well that goes without saying.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
I'm still waiting for them to cross chickens with octopii ... everyone gets a drumstick.
Chickens are better than cows. The furst words of the article summary:
Somehow, I don't see cow eggs as being able to compete, either in quantity, or in ease of access, to hen eggs :-)
ummm...you don't eat them - the proteins (interferon b-1a, miR24) are extracted from the egg whites and used in creating treatments for various types of cancers as well as other diseases such as MS. I imagine it's less expensive than creating those proteins artifically in a lab like *i think* they do for insulin (also a protein) ...that's kewl.
You had me at merlot
Ho Hum. Nice article but a bit anticlimactic. These guys are NOT the first to do this. Roslin institute is more than a year behind at least one other company. A good friend of mine, by the name of William MacArthur who is a brilliant Molecular Biologist, founded a company called Geneworks in Ann Arbor, Michigan several years ago with the goal of creating transgenic chickens that do exactly the same thing as the chickens described in the article. He succeeded and more than a year ago had pure-breeding, transgenic chickens. Before anyone else in the world. He had been in regular contact with Amgen, Genentech, and all the "Big Boys" and also received FDA certification. In addition to creating the chickens, he developed a simple and cheap way of extracting whatever protein had been created from the egg. His company had either one or two huge chicken barns in Southeastern Michigan and they just needed a bit more capital to make it "over the hump" and really take off. Ironically enough, none of the big companies would give him the relatively small amount of capital that he needed to continue because, as he explained it to me, their risk assessment programs were all based on drugs manufactured in a drug factory and as such, they had no way to evaluate his new methods, so they wouldn't give him any funding and Geneworks had to shut down in August 2005. I happened to stop in at their offices as they were loading up the equipment and getting ready to auction it off. However some of his transgenic chickens were donated to a university (I don't remember which one) so that the line could continue. By the way the folks at the Roslin institute know who Bill Mac Arthur is and what he was able to do.