RESEARCH ▶▶▶
Gene editing makes birds resistant to avian flu
When bird flu strikes a commercial flock mortality is often high, production drops and in many countries a stamping out protocol is activated. EggXYt is developing a tool to tackle this costly chain of events. By using gene editing, it can give chickens genetic immunity against a host of diseases, first and foremost, avian influenza.
BY REBECCA KWAKMAN T
he Israeli company known for its flagship egg-sex- ing solution for layers was set up in late 2016 when co-founder Professor Dani Offen of Tel Aviv Universi- ty approached Yehuda Elram (CEO) with his idea to
use CRISPR, a revolutionary and Nobel Prize-winning gene
editing technology, to put an end to the culling of day-old male chicks. Recently, the company branched out into the field of disease prevention, licencing the GEiGS Technology Platform from Tropic Biosciences in a project to develop resistance to avian influenza (AI) in chickens. “Early on, we identified disease pre- vention in poultry as a problem worth solving,” says Elram. “With AI in particular, whenever an outbreak is reported typi- cally all birds within a certain radius must be culled by law to stop the disease in its tracks, regardless of whether or not they have been infected,” he adds. This reality, often seen as cruel and unnecessary by society, comes with a hefty price tag too: “The 2015 US outbreak, for example, led to the dis- truction of 50 million birds at an economic cost of US$ 3.3 bil- lion. Today, some countries address AI with vaccines and up- graded biosecurity measures but this is simply not sufficient to prevent all outbreaks and control all subtypes of viruses.” On top of which, vaccination comes at a price too, especially for exporting countries, as not all importers allow products of vaccinated birds into their country.
Yehuda Elram identified disease prevention in poultry as a problem worth solving. 38
▶ POULTRY WORLD | No. 2, 2021
Genetic immunity “We asked ourselves how we could tackle these challenges,” Elram continues. “We assembled a team of world-class molec- ular biologists whose expertise lies in gene editing and avian sciences, making them uniquely suited to this task. By using gene editing, our team can give chickens genetic immunity against a host of diseases; in this first instance, that is avian influenza”. Given their shared interest in gene editing, Elram and his team were closely following Tropic Biosciences’ work. “We seized the opportunity to deploy GEiGS ourselves, and this will be the first time that we have used RNA interference methodologies in a solution of our own. In this case, we will edit genes in the chicken genome that do not code for pro- teins themselves, but rather regulate the expression of other proteins,” he explains. “We will redirect these genes to target the virus itself, preventing it from replicating in the cell. The value of this platform is that the changes made to the ge-
PHOTO: OMRI ADAR
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