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Cattle farm designed to produce human antibodies
Ground has been broken for a different type of cattle farm with the goal of improving human health. S-A-B Biotherapeutics has chosen an 80-acre greenfield site in southeastern South Dakota where it will raise cloned dairy cattle, not for milk or meat, but for human antibodies to fight disease.
Eddie Sullivan is president and CEO, tells Brownfield Ag News, “It is a production farm that is specifically built for cattle to produce a human bio-pharmaceutical, so we call it ‘Pharm.’”
He says the cattle will be used for producing biopharmaceuticals that are fully human, “These animals have been designed to produce human antibodies, rather than cow antibodies. And these are the proteins that fight disease inside of our bodies.”
The cattle are two-thirds Holstein and one-third Jersey. Sullivan says this is the world’s only large animal system for producing fully human animal antibody proteins, “To target specific diseases. The disease that we word in are things like infectious diseases, oncology, autoimmune diseases like diabetes and psoriasis and others. And, inflammation.”
The company has been conducting clinical trials. The cattle are in Iowa and will be moved to the South Dakota facility when it’s ready.
AUDIO: Interview with Eddie Sullivan (contains some minor audio issues):
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