Genavia Therapeutics

Hatching a New Factor Therapy

Here’s a new post I read in the news wires: biotech start-up company Genavia Therapeutics wants to produce a blood clotting protein from chicken eggs.

Just when you think you’ve heard everything.

You may have read in my newsletter PEN about pigs that may be able to express factor through their milk glands. These are called transgenic animals. Another company here in Massachusetts wants to do this with goats.

Well, Genavia will do it with chicken eggs. It plans to use technology developed by Californian company Origen Therapeutics to produce human factor VIII. The technology involves injecting a human gene into chickens and extracting the protein from the whites of their eggs. Omelets, anyone?

Genavia chief operating officer Peter Bradley has said that this “avian transgenic technology” could cut the cost of treatment to as little as 20% of the current price. “We plan to not only take market share from the current players but to actually grow the market,” Bradley said as reported in the Waikato Times.* Now that would be something to crow about.

Stay tuned as we watch developments in this research and production; we hope to provide more information as it becomes available.

*”Start-up gets boost” by ANDREW JANES – Waikato Times, 10/03/2009

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Beautiful Boy by David Sheff.
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