The future cost of producing cancer drugs may have dropped in price with the laying of eggs from genetically-modified chickens.

Roslin Institute scientists have announced the successful creation of five generations of chickens that can lay eggs containing a specific protein needed to manufacture drugs used in the treatment of cancer. The Roslin Institute is the same research facility that cloned the Finn Dorset lamb named Dolly.

According to the BBC News report that states, "the work at Roslin shows it is now possible to use chickens as biofactories," more than one genetically-modified animal is being used as just such a factory for complex proteins needed to produce drugs.

It will be five-to-ten years before the drugs made from the protein of eggs from these genetically-modified chickens can be safely used, if clinical trials show favorable outcomes.

Neuroblastoma is the most common tumor in infants younger than one year of age and a common solid tumor found in children. Neuroblastoma accounts for 7-10 percent of childhood cancers. It is a solid tumor that arises in a part of the nervous system outside of the brain.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital says that Neuroblastoma tumors have been successfully treated in the lab with genetically modified cells that sought out and activated a chemotherapy drug placed directly at the cancer cells.

The chemotherapy drug, called CPT-11, is already used to treat cancers, doctors and scientists already know how the drugs behaves in humans. This should make it easier to translate the lab findings to the clinic. The researchers showed that the modified cells migrated to tumors regardless of how small the tumors were or where they were located in the body.

The homing ability of these cells, called neural stem-progenitor cells (NSPCs), can be used to target solid tumors that have metastasized. The researchers based their new treatment on work previously reported that showed certain NSPCs have a natural tendency to seek out damaged or cancerous areas in the brain.

Since 1988, Wendy Chioji has been a reporter and anchorwoman for WESH 2 News in Orlando, Florida. She has covered news ranging from the pope's visit to Cuba in 1998 to the Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002. She continuously covered last year's hurricanes, and she has an Emmy award under her belt for a special news report on heroin use.

Wendy is a top notch athlete. She has run five marathons and competed in several triathlons and half-ironman races. She has ridden in parts of several stages of the Tour de France, and traveled across the country with Lance Armstrong in 2003 -- covering 550 miles -- with the Tour of Hope event to raise awareness for cancer research. Wendy has also made a tour with stage II breast cancer. Since 2001, she has been surviving this disease.

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.