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by fabian2k
3775 days ago
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It is certainly a rather complicated and expensive process, but I think you're dramatically underestimating the complexity of the immune system. This isn't something you can simply reproduce in a cell culture, there is a lot involved in an immune reaction that finally results in specific antibodies. |
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3906537/
The article linked gives a good summary of state of the art (as of 2014) of antibody production.
In short, to create full length antibodies, we need mammalian cells to perform modification to the protein after its been synthesized to become a full antibody.
However, maintaining large cell cultures of mammalians cells is actually a huge head ache - it really is easier just to maintain the whole creature. And once you're at that phase, you can not only take advantage of all the mammalian cellular machinery, but you can take advantage of the whole milk thing (remember milk is a good source of protein? All that protein is synthesized and PUT into there. Adding another protein to the mix is relatively straight forward).
Put another way, using whole mammals to grow antibodies is roughly as insane as using whole mammals for meat or milk. Sure, if you can overcome the massive scientific and engineering hurdles, there are theoretically more energetically efficient ways to do it. But good luck.