Cattle call

Collaborative work between military, industry, university and NIH scientists suggests cattle might help battle emerging infectious diseases. The researchers have developed a line of transgenic cows capable of producing polyclonal human antibodies, and believe the animals can help counter outbreaks by enabling rapid mass production of passive immunotherapies.

The cows - dubbed transchromosomic (Tc) bovines - are a line of cattle engineered to lack their own antibodies, and to instead produce polyclonal antibodies using germline sequences from an artificial human chromosome. ...