7 Healthcast: Goat meds

Life on the farm can be a good one for a goat, especially these goats.

Tom Newberry, GTC goat farm
"It's like the Ritz Carlton of goat farms."

They're treated like royalty, because they're not normal goats, they've actually been created to make a life-saving human drug.

At this farm outside Boston, the goats are genetically-altered to produce a human blood protein in their milk.

This is whole milk, clarified milk - final product and every morning the nanny goats hoof it to the milking parlor.

While they have a bite to eat - technicians connect them to machines where the protein rich milk is collected.

That milk is then sent to a lab where the protein is used to make a new F-D-A approved drug called Atryn.

Dr. Geoffrey Cox, GTC Biotherapeutics
"We have 15-hundred animals on our farm and we have about 200 animals that actually produce Atryn."

Atryn is made for people who have low levels of something called antithrombin, a protein that keeps our blood flowing.

If you don't have enough - you could develop deadly blood clots.

The news has the medical community buzzing.

Dr. Villa, Mercy Hospital
"The fact that we now have these animals that are concentrating those proteins in the milk- it's phenomenal- it's cheaper, readily available- it's in essence a human factory- but we've translated that factory into animals."

The company is also developing blood proteins for other disorders.

Dr. Villa, Mercy Hospital
"I think that this is tremendous progress in medicine- there is no doubt about that."

So what sounds like science fiction could be opening the barn door to a new class of medicine.

Atryn should be available to patients by the end of the summer.

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