Hungarian scientists in protein production breakthrough

A recent breakthrough by two Hungarian scientists may allow medical proteins and antibodies to be more quickly and cheaply produced in animals, reports index.hu.

As part of their research, Dr. Zsuzsanna Bősze and Dr. Imre Kacskovics of the Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center (MBK), have been producing transgenic animals - one that has a foreign gene inserted in its genome - that are able to synthesize human antibodies in their milk.

Human diseases normally cannot be tested on experimental animals as they lack some cell-surface molecules which, in humans, serve as receptors for the viruses. An example is the polio virus, which normal mice cannot be infected with, so they cannot serve as an inexpensive, easily-manipulated model for studying the disease. Transgenic mice, however, express the human gene for the polio virus receptor, can be infected by polio virus, and they even develop paralysis and other pathological changes characteristic of the disease in humans, opening the way to research.

Bősze and Kacskovics managed to produce rabbits which expressed human protein in their milk. Their new transgenic mice express larger quantities in a shorter time. Such animals will play an extremely important role in human therapy. Roughly 100 tons of human antibodies are used worldwide every year, and this number is increasing by more than 10% every year.

There are about 2,000 immunodeficient patients today in Hungary who need antibody therapy. Antibodies are also widely used in the treatment of tumor, infections and organ transplant patients, diagnostics and research.

Meanwhile, antibodies from humans are becoming rarer in Hungary. One reason for this is the end of compulsory military service. Soldiers used to receive two days of leave if they gave blood, and a few weeks before doing so they often received a vaccine making their system produce more antibodies. This source of antibodies is no longer available.

Several companies were formed in the last few years specializing in producing human antibodies in animals, one being Immunogenes Kft, founded by Bősze and Kacskovics. Their technology is limited to mice at the moment but in the next few years they want to produce transgenic rabbits and sheep as well. Their final goal is founding an antibody-producing company in Hungary. So far they have succeeded as they gained the support of an international scientific board, Hungarian and international private investors and made a contract with an international manager group which has vast experiences in biotechnology.

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