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Moderated conference on GMOs in the pipeline, hosted by the FAO Biotechnology Forum in 2012

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Biotech-Mod2 <[log in to unmask]>
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Biotech-Mod2 <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 9 Nov 2012 09:50:14 +0100
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My name is Dave Edwards and I am the Director for Animal Biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) in Washington, DC. BIO is an industry trade organization for biotechnology including human health, food and agriculture, and industrial/biofuels application. I am an animal geneticist by training with a PhD from Michigan State University in swine genetics, and I work on developing and advocating policies that support biotechnology and research in public policy and funding. BIO holds a Livestock Biotech Summit every other year in which we discuss regulation, policies, and funding for animal biotechnology in food, animal health, and human health applications.

While we concentrate mainly in the United States for our advocacy work, mostly due to resources, we also track animal biotechnology development worldwide. I would like to echo the sentiment of Jim Murray (message 12) that development timelines for genetically engineered (GE) animals are currently lengthy, due to various factors including biology and regulatory delays. The use of these technologies (and especially in the next 5 years) worldwide would be increased with more predictable timelines and further investment (which is dependent on the former).

These concerns aside, my question for the conference is on the use of GE animals for human health applications internationally. So far, most questions have been on food use. That is important to us all, but I thought I would post on this slightly different topic. Many applications are currently being developed, and they could even be in a 5-year time frame to use. My thoughts on these applications will be more general, instead of specific events. They could include the production of human pharmaceuticals in plasma/milk/other harvestable tissues. They could include animals that would not transmit certain zoonotic diseases that would impact humans as well. They could even include animals that produce vaccine components.

These animals could be bioreactors for these components at a much lower cost than setup and construction of a full manufacturing facility to grow these components in vats of media. Of course, some cost for a setup to separate components from milk or blood plasma may have to be a part of the manufacture, but mammary glands are very good at producing the necessary components from just a few animals.

Are these applications of interest to those in the developing world? Several animals with traits that would impact this area are in research barns right now, but very few have been commercialized so far. What challenges do the attendees of this conference see as hurdles for the use of these animals?

David Edwards
Director, Animal Biotechnology
Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO)
1201 Maryland Ave SW, Suite 900
Washington, DC 20024
United States
Phone:+1(202)962.6697
dedwards (at) bio.org
www.bio.org

[As written in the conference Background Document, "Outside the field of agriculture, GM animals have been approved to produce a small number of pharmaceutical proteins that are commercially available (EMA, 2012; Vàzquez-Salat and Houdebine, 2012). These include the use of GM rabbits to produce conestat alfa, the active substance in Ruconest (a medicine used to treat attacks of hereditary angioedema in adults) and the use of GM goats to produce antithrombin alfa, the active substance in Atryn (used to treat patients who have congenital antithrombin deficiency). The pharmaceutical proteins are extracted from the animals' milk". (http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/ap109e/ap109e00.pdf )...Moderator].

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information on this FAO Biotechnology Forum, see http://www.fao.org/biotech/biotech-forum/]

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