"Traditional methods for producing therapeutic proteins such as antibodies used to treat cancer and arthritis are expensive. Farm animals could produce them faster and cheaper, the thinking goes.
Researchers led by Helen Sang of the Roslin BioCentre in Edinburgh, Scotland created transgenic hens by inserting the genes for desired pharmaceutical proteins into the hen’s gene for ovalbumin, a protein that makes up 54 percent of egg whites.
All the egg whites from these hens contained miR24, an antibody with potential for treating malignant melanoma. The whites also packed human interferon b-1a, an antiviral drug."