Pharming brings cow-human hybrids toward market
Seed Magazine reports that Dutch corporation Pharming is a couple of years away from bringing milk to market that is genetically engineered to have bumped up levels of human lactoferrin. They say: Since the protein has the ability to bind iron, is a natural anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral, is an antioxidant and also has immunomodulatory properties, large groups of people might benefit from orally administered lactoferrin. It's been tested on rats and they expect the American FDA to approve it shortly enough that it'll be appearing in US food maybe as soon as late this year. Seems pretty unlikely this'll turn up in the UK, considering that a similarly transgenic product, Atryn, an anti-clotting agent harvested from goat milk, got the big nix from the European Medicines Agency, but where there's two, there'll be more.
