Genetically modified cows are currently being used by an American biotech firm to produce human antibodies that subdue SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen causing Covid-19 – with plans to start clinical trials this summer.

SAB Biotherapeutics, a US firm based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, genetically alters dairy cows so that certain immune cells carry the DNA that allows people to make antibodies.

That modification “enables the animals to manufacture large quantities of human antibodies against a pathogen protein injected into them”, the company claims.

Eddie Sullivan, SAB Biotherapeutics’s president and CEO, said: “Cows make good antibody factories; and not just because they have more blood than smaller animals engineered to synthesise human versions of the…