Transgenic swine as a recombinant production system for human hemoglobin

Publisher Summary Human hemoglobin, after appropriate modification, may be potentially useful as a red blood cell substitute for transporting oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. A recombinant source of human hemoglobin that is separate from the human donor pool has several potential advantages: unlimited supply, controlled and validated source, and use of genetically modified variants. This chapter describes the steps necessary to produce recombinant human hemoglobin in the red blood cells of pigs and illustrates the separation of human and porcine hemoglobins by ion-exchange chromatography. Although hemoglobin A is the initial molecule, a similar process would be appropriate with hemoglobin variants. There has been extensive research on the expression and regulation of human globin genes in transgenic mice and, although it is not yet known at the same level of detail which of the sequences are necessary for expression in transgenic pigs, several features are likely to be important.