They look like normal black-and-white Holstein cows, a common sight in Western Iowa. But these cows are special: used not for their milk or meat, but for their blood. They’re plasma donors, and one day, the life they save may be your own.
The cows were genetically engineered by biotech company SAB Biotherapeutics to produce human antibodies, proteins that fight pathogens. These antibodies could one day treat infectious diseases like Ebola, influenza, and Zika….
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These transgenic animals are promising because they could make drug-manufacturing cheaper in the long run. Once created, the animals can basically keep pumping out drugs at a low cost — the cost of maintaining chickens and goats in a farm. And now that new gene-editing techniques like CRISPR-Cas9 are making swapping and inserting genes easier than ever, creating new animals in the lab will be faster and cheaper. “I expect that we will see this progressing at light speed now,” says William Muir, a professor of animal sciences at Purdue University. “We know the technology, we know how to use it, and we’re just waiting for, how many applications can we use it for?”
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