Scottish Transgenic Sheep Flock Seen Safe....

. . .for Now

Reuters 16mar01

LONDON - A flock of precious transgenic sheep, bred to produce medicines in their milk, is safe from Britain's foot-and-mouth disease for now, the biotechnology company that owns them said on Friday. PPL Therapeutics, which helped produce Dolly the cloned sheep, said on Friday that its transgenic sheep flocks in Scotland were effectively isolated in the middle of an arable farming area.

``This should not affect PPL,'' Managing Director Ron James told Reuters. ``We have run a quarantine farm in Scotland for 9 years, and no animals have been brought in since then. All our staff shower as they come into work and as they go out, and we have brought in no feed that contains any animal protein.''

PPL has nearly 700 transgenic sheep on its farm, which is across the country from the area where foot-and-mouth has so far been found in the south west of Scotland.

The animals have been genetically engineered--but not cloned--to produce human proteins in their milk. PPL hopes to launch its first sheep's milk-derived drug, to treat the lung condition emphysema, in late 2004.

Its main production flocks are located in New Zealand, where some 4,000 sheep will produce the emphysema medicine, once it wins regulatory approval.

James said that while the risk of foot-and-mouth at present was remote, PPL had contingency plans should infection reach the site and animals have to be slaughtered. It has stores of frozen transgenic semen held at two sites from which new gene-spliced animals could be produced if necessary.

Dolly herself, the world's first cloned mammal, is being held in quarantine at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh. PPL collaborated with Roslin in cloning her in 1996.