pharm animal

Researchers say pharm animals are the only way to produce some of the more complex proteins needed for use as drugs.

Bacterial cells cannot carry out these advanced tasks but animal cells can, making pharm animals the producers of choice.

Because they are domesticated and are so valuable, pharm animals are extremely unlikely to escape or pose any environmental threat.

Pharm animals are also of interest because some therapeutic proteins otherwise have to be collected from blood donated by people, which can be tainted by viruses.

Some compounds of interest, like the human blood protein erythropoietin, which has not yet been produced by a pharm animal, command prices of more than $15 million an ounce.

They were gene-spliced pharmaceutical goats, "pharm animals," and despite their yellow, devillike, reptilian eyeballs, the goats were remarkably docile and stupid.

The most striking of the new creatures being concocted by plucking a gene from one organism and inserting it into the DNA of another are what are known as pharm animals.

Two companies, the Genzyme Corporation of Cambridge, Mass., and PPL Therapeutics, a Scottish company, already have products from pharm animals being tested in clinical trials supervised by the Food and Drug Administration.