These aren't just any cows. Scientists genetically engineered the animals to give them an immune system that's part human. That way, the animals produce disease-fighting human antibodies to Covid-19, which are then turned into a drug to attack the virus.
A South Dakota company expects to start human trials next month for a Covid-19 antibody treatment derived from the plasma of cows.
But these aren't just any cows. Scientists genetically engineered the animals to give them an immune system that's part human. That way, the animals produce disease-fighting human antibodies to Covid-19, which are then turned into a drug to attack the virus. "These animals are producing neutralizing antibodies that kill [the novel coronavirus] in the laboratory," Eddie Sullivan, CEO of SAB Biotherapeutics said in a statement to CNN.
How llamas could hold the key to combatting Covid-19 03:09 To make its drug, SAB took skin cells from a cow and knocked out the genes that are responsible for creating cow antibodies, and instead inserted an engineered artificial human chromosome that produces human antibodies. They put the DNA from those cells into a cow egg and turned it into an embryo.
Regeneron is studying whether the drug will either prevent or treat coronavirus. "We would hope that by the end of the summer, we might be able to be providing hundreds of thousands of doses to patients in need both for prevention and also for treatment," Yancopoulos told CNN in May. The genetically engineered mice obviously aren't large. Scientists extract the most powerful human antibodies from the mice and then clone them, theoretically in unlimited amounts.
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