New biotech process for cheaper anti-cancer drugs

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New biotech process for cheaper anti-cancer drugs

Media Release - University of Auckland - 09 March 2016

Cheaper anti-cancer drugs will result from a new biotech process that produces an antibody to enhance cancer treatment.

Milking goats are used to produce mono-clonal antibodies (MCA) in their milk, which are specifically used as human anti-cancer treatments.

The world leading process was developed by AgResearch scientists and will be tested at the University of Auckland this year.

Mono-clonal antibodies help the fight against cancer in several ways by; making cancer cells more visible to the immune system; preventing growth signals from getting through to cancer cells; helping to deliver radiation and drugs to cancer cells; and stopping new blood cells from forming, thus slowing the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the cancer cells.

The antibodies in this research replicate an anti-cancer drug that is used on a wide range of metastatic cancers (Cetuximab), and future drug targets may include Herceptin and Rituximab.

The new biotech process is expected to be cheaper and more effective than those currently used to produce these drugs.

“Once a drug comes off patent, anyone can produce it, but the price is ultimately regulated by the cost of production and these drugs are typically very expensive,” says Professor Peter Shepherd, leader of the University of Auckland team working with AgResearch.

The research will assess how pure the new MCA based drug is, how effective is it, and what percentage of the protein can be recovered from the goats milk.

Professor Shepherd says the system they are working on with AgResearch has the benefit of very low production costs, achieved by producing large amounts of the drug in the goat’s milk.

“The aim is to greatly lower the cost of the drug for practical purposes and eventually build an industry based on this in New Zealand,” he says.

“Here at the University of Auckland, we will be testing the efficacy of the drug extracted from the milk, compared to the traditional production methods,” says Professor Shepherd. “We believe the new drug may be better than the current version, because of the way the goat produces it in its milk.”

The new process takes the goat’s gene promoter and links it to the gene for this particular anti-cancer drug product.

When a goat embryo is produced, the antibody is inserted into its DNA. The goat develops with that gene and when these transgenic goats mature and lactate, they produce the drug as an extra protein in their milk.

Dairy goats are used for their high milk production, and the protein is extracted from the goats’ milk. The resulting anti-bodies used in humans will specifically target cancers.

“There are no side effects in the growing animal as most of the time in the goat’s lifecycle the gene is switched off as they grow and develop”, says Professor Shepherd.

“We have identified skills in agricultural technologies as an area that New Zealand can exploit to improved human health, and this project is the first of these initiatives,” says the head of Medical Sciences at the University of Auckland, Professor Paul Donaldson.

“This project is a great example of the complementary technologies of the University of Auckland and AgResearch and we hope it will lead to future collaborations between us in the agricultural-medicine space,” he says.

Professor Donaldson says the University of Auckland has a lot of experience in developing anti-cancer drugs, experience working out how to clinically test them and how to develop that into a company to get it to market.

“By combining these skills with AgResearch’s ability to develop the technology to produce the anti-cancer drug in live animals we are combining capabilities from two different parts of the New Zealand research community to maximise potential outcomes for both patients and the economy.”

“There are few countries in the world with the equivalent of New Zealand’s huge expertise in animal production and milk production and all the systems that it would take to make this successful,” says the head of the team at AgResearch Dr Goetz Laible. “New Zealand is extremely well placed to do this and has some fantastic animal scientists who have all the skills to do this type of work.”

ENDS

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