What are Genetically Altered (GA) animals used for?
Only one in three procedures involving the use of GA animals is for a purpose other than the maintenance of breeding colonies. The use of GA animals provides the potential for investigating, and hopefully finding treatments for, diseases such as cancer, cystic fibrosis and multiple sclerosis. Animals can be genetically modified to produce human proteins (in their milk) to help treat human disease, to allow their organs to be used for transplant to humans (xenotransplantation), to become models for human diseases, aiding research into therapies or to be resistant to disease or other adverse conditions which might affect the animal.
