Business Potential for Agricultural Biotechnology - Asian Productivity ...

Business Potential for Agricultural Biotechnology Products
• Production of biological products usable in the food industry amounting to 15% of the
need of the country.
Benefiting from biotechnology is considered a way to decrease overuse of basic resources
and contribute to their sustainability.
Trends in Korean Animal Biotechnology and Production of Transgenic Livestock Harboring
Recombinant Human Proteins in Milk and Urine
The Republic of Korea has a large number of government institutes which undertake
research on GMOs. Although the issue of GM food safety has not been settled, several GM
crops are currently being imported as food ingredients as well as for industrial purposes. On the
other hand, many researchers as well as biocompanies are in favor of GMOs that produce useful
materials, since the organisms are accepted more easily by the general public when compared
with GM food itself. The field of animal biotechnology has produced the most promising results
in Korea, with special emphasis on the production of therapeutic proteins from transgenic
animals, which is a highly cost-effective process. Although manufacture of pharmaceutical
human proteins from transgenic animals is considered feasible using cost-effective bioreactor
systems, only a few existing businesses seem successful in producing such animals. Only a
single product has completed clinical trials and reached the market, after decades of research, but
researchers and the pharmaceutical industry have continued pursuing the technology in the hope
of achieving this goal within the next few years.
There are two major targets for the production of foreign protein from the transgenic
animal: milk and urine. In Korea, the National Livestock Research Institute (NLRI), Suwon, has
been a leader in Korean livestock research since 1906. The Institute has a well-organized research
system covering almost every aspect of farm animal research. Although the Animal Biotechnology
Division is relatively new, it has focused on current technologies, including the field
of livestock cloning and transgenic animals. Using mouse whey acidic protein promoter as an
expression controller, NLRI scientists designed a human erythropoietin (EPO) transgenic expression
vector and introduced it into pig embryos via microinjection. The founder male was
born in 1998. After the identification and analysis of hEPO proteins in its milk, NLRI has been
producing TG progeny. NLRI researchers have also microinjected cloned transgene constructs
into a one-celled embryo, which was then transferred to a surrogate sow. The resulting piglets
were identified by PCR using genomic DNA from each piglet’s tail. In 1998, a transgenic
founder was identified out of 47 candidate piglets using PCR and Southern blot analysis. The
founder was later named “Saerome,” meaning “novel one” in Korean. Since 1999, a transgenic
pig herd has been propagated. The milk from the transgenic female has about 880 units of
human EPO in one milliliter of pig’s milk. After removal of glycosylation, this EPO showed the
same molecular weight as commercial EPO that is identical to natural EPO without glycosylation.
Amino acid sequence analysis showed that the EPO is indeed human EPO, not porcine
EPO. Since Saerome, NLRI has produced a number of transgenic pig lines harboring human
genes encoding therapeutic proteins such as human blood coagulation factor VIII or tissue plasminogen
activator (t-PA) under regulatory control of mammary-gland-specific promoters (whey
acidic protein or beta-casein promoter) or urinary-bladder-specific uroplakin II (UPII) promoter.
NLRI has already shortened the timelines for the production of transgenic pigs.
The Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB) announced that a
transgenic cow, “Boram,” that can express human lactoferrin (hLF) in its milk, was generated
utilizing microinjection. hLF is a pivotal protein, abundant in mother’s milk, that confers antibacterial
functions on babies and elevates their immune responses. The complete gene encoding
the hLF was isolated from a cosmid library and its structure was characterized. The expression
level of hLF protein in a transgenic animal ranged from 0.1 to 34 g per ml.
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