Indians have another reason to consider cows as sacred as a new study shows antibodies similar to theirs may help human beings grappling with hormone deficiencies.
Scientists have developed a potential new therapy by fusing together human hormones and antibodies to mimic long, stalk-like cow antibodies.
Their research, published recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows the therapy could also provide the foundation for treatments for a range of other diseases.
"We were inspired by this unique structure found in nature, and we assembled an antibody that might one day benefit humans," said co-first author Tao Liu, research associate at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in the US.
Many people need injections of human growth hormone (hGH) to combat conditions such as Turner syndrome (which causes short stature in females), low birth weight and other hormone deficiencies. Unfortunately, the body degrades hGH quickly, sometimes within 30 minutes.
"This means people need to inject themselves every day," explained Liu. "For a kid, that's really painful -- and for a drug, that's really bad."
Antibodies, however, can last for weeks in the body.
The researchers drew inspiration from a study of bovine antibody, that has an unusual structure - a round base with a long amino-acid "stalk" pointing out. On the top of the stalk is a "knob region" that presumably binds to pathogens.
The researchers fused hGH to a coiled version of the bovine antibody's stalks.
This fusion was stable and maintained the function of hGH, so they next tried making an antibody-hormone molecule without any cow DNA, so that the molecules might someday be applied in human therapy.
They used the humanised anti-cancer antibody Herceptin as the antibody base in the new treatment and then tested their antibody-hGH molecule in rat models. They found that hGH- deficient rats that received the treatment grew normally. In fact, the treated rats only needed injections two times a week to grow, compared with daily injections for rats given hGH without the antibody base.
"It acts just like the normal growth hormone," said Liu. "This means the treatment might only need to be injected once a week or even once a month in humans. It would be so much easier for patients."
Subsequent experiments showed no harmful side effects from the treatments.
The research team is working to optimise the treatment for potential use in humans, and Liu hopes the method could someday deliver longer-lasting doses of hGH - or maybe even insulin to treat type 2 diabetes - to patients in need.
Cows are considered as sacred by a large number of Indians.
