The invention relates to a non-human transgenic
mammal that is useful for the production of a
protein of interest that may be toxic to the
mammal. The
mammal is characterized by the fact that it is transgenic for the production in its milk of an inactive form of the
protein of interest, preferably recombinant
human insulin. It is not possible to produce recombinant
human insulin in transgenic mammals since this molecule has a certain degree of
biological activity in the mammals and could be toxic to the mammal. Thus, the invention involves
cloning a genetic construct comprising a sequence encoding a modified
human insulin precursor under the control of a beta
casein promoter in an
expression vector. It also involves transfecting the expression
plasmid into fetal bovine somatic cells, such as fibroblasts, and enucleating bovine oocytes by
nuclear transfer to generate transgenic embryos. The invention gives rise to transgenic bovine that will be able to produce a modified human
insulin precursor in their mammary glands. Afterwards, the milk of these transgenic mammals can be collected, the modified human
insulin precursor can be converted
in vitro into recombinant human
insulin, and the recombinant human insulin can be purified to homogeneity as a pure
biopharmaceutical product.