University of Illinois researcher helps create first-ever insulin-producing cow
CHICAGO (CBS) – Researchers at the University of Illinois helped create the first-ever insulin-producing cow that could save lives.
You could guess the focus of Professor Matthew Wheeler's work by noticing the cattle grazing in his Zoom background.
"I work with cows quite a bit," Wheeler said.
But one special cow graces the pages of his research at the University of Illinois.
"We did not name her," he said, laughing.
The unnamed cow lives in Brazil, and she's the first cow in the world to produce milk with human insulin.
"There'll be insulin in the milk that you can purify, yes," Wheeler said.
He teamed up with researchers at the University of Sao Paulo to engineer the special cow. He said they targeted the "human pro-insulin gene" into the milk of cattle.
Wheeler said the mammary clan is like a protein factory, and researchers figured they could use it to produce insulin and help people with diabetes.
"In the last 20 years, insulin's gone up 600%, but if we had a herd of cows that made a cheap source of insulin and a lot of other proteins for human medicine or even for animal medicine, it might be much more economical and cost-effective for those folks," Wheeler said.
So, what does he envision for the future?
"Why shouldn't the Midwest and specifically Illinois be the source of insulin for the rest of the world?" he said.
One Brazilian bovine could be just the start. Wheeler said he can envision a future where cows produce all of the world's insulin.
"It's not the beginning of the end, but it's the end of the beginning, so yeah, we're excited," Wheeler said.
