Tag Archives: Daiming Jiang

Squeezing blood from rice

They are squeezing the equivalent of human blood protein (blood-derived human serum albumin [HSA]) from transgenic rice according to the research paper (open access) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). From the abstract in PNAS,

Human serum albumin (HSA) is widely used in clinical and cell culture applications. Conventional production of HSA from human blood is limited by the availability of blood donation and the high risk of viral transmission from donors. Here, we report the production of Oryza sativa recombinant HSA (OsrHSA) from transgenic rice seeds. … Physical and biochemical characterization of OsrHSA revealed it to be equivalent to plasma-derived HSA (pHSA). The efficiency of OsrHSA in promoting cell growth and treating liver cirrhosis in rats was similar to that of pHSA. Furthermore, OsrHSA displays similar in vitro and in vivo immunogenicity as pHSA. Our results suggest that a rice seed bioreactor produces cost-effective recombinant HSA that is safe and can help to satisfy an increasing worldwide demand for human serum albumin.

The Oct. 31, 2011 news item about this research on physorg.com notes this about the demand for HSA,

“Our results suggest that a rice seed bioreactor produces cost-effective recombinant HSA that is safe and can help to satisfy an increasing worldwide demand for human serum albumin,” said the study.

The protein is often used in the manufacture of vaccines and drugs and is given to patients with serious burn injuries, hemorrhagic shock and liver disease, the researchers said.

In 2007, a shortage in China led to price spikes and a brief rise in the number of fraudulent albumin medicines on the market.

Concerns have also been raised about the potential for the transmission of hepatitis and HIV, since the protein comes from human blood.

The lead author, Yang He is from Wuhan University, China. Other listed authors are:  Tingting Ning, Tingting Xie, Qingchuan Qiu, Liping Zhang, Yunfang Sun, Daiming Jiang, Kai Fu, Fei Yin, Wenjing Zhang, Lang Shen, Hui Wang, Jianjun Li, Qishan Lin, Yunxia Sun, Hongzhen Li, Yingguo Zhu, and Daichang Yang. This list gets more interesting if you have time to check out their affiliations (at the PNAS website) which include the National Research Council of Canada’s Institutes for Biological Sciences, University of Albany, New York State and Joinn Laboratory, Beijing and you get a sense of how much cooperation it takes to do this research. Finally, the paper is titled, Large-scale production of functional human serum albumin from transgenic rice seeds.