Charlie Emrich, in Glowing chickens bring hope in fight against cancer, calls fluorescent chickens, "cool in a creepy, mad-scientist sort of way." When you consider that scientists have combined jellyfish DNA with chickens to create illuminated birds, you can kind of see it from Emrich's descriptive perspective. The purpose of chickens that glow, is that scientists can track antibody-based therapies that might prove valuable in treating human cancers.
UC Davis Cancer Center Dr. Joseph Tuscano explains that, "One of the problems with modern drugs is that they're not very specific. Even aspirin is not very specific. Antibodies, on the other hand are highly, highly specific meaning that, like an archer's arrow, they can effectively target a disease. Antibody-based therapies are one of the biggest advances in cancer treatment in the last 40 years."
Emrich quotes researchers of the project and takes you through the purpose and process of genetically-modified glow-in-the-dark chickens in the potential development of antibody-based therapies to one day treat cancer here.
