Animales transgénicos para producción de proteínas humanas

Resum

The appearance of transgenic animals in the eighties, opened a wide and important field of study, as theseanimals can be used as research models of human diseases, as organ donors or to produce protein of interest. The pharmaceutical industry has seen this as an opportunity to produce human proteins at low cost. It having many advantages in comparison with former methods of protein production. In contrast to what happen in bacteria, fungi and transgenic plants, due to the post-translational modification that takes place in this transgenic animal we get fully active proteins. Also has the advantage of low cost compared with massive production in cell culture. However ethical issues of animal use and potential consequences to human’s health have made decrease considerably research in transgenic animals in recent years. In this work we make a review of the different methods of producing of both protein and transgenic animals. We finally focus on the production of proteins in the mammary gland tissue (as most used method for obtaining transgenic proteins) and examples of transgenic proteins produced.