Cell factories

I'm listening to an audio version of "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee, which turns out to be more of a history of science than a popularization of what we know about genetics, but a good one. This anecdote is worth sharing: in the early 1980's, biochemists were starting to harness the protein-synthesis machinery of bacteria, injected with factory-assembled genes, to grow valuable proteins for human medicine. Just as they succeeded in a proof-of-concept synthesis of insulin, the AIDS epidemic hit, highlighting a critical need for blood clotting factor that needn't be harvested from thousands of dicey donations to a clearly contaminated blood supply. Biochemists worked like demons to produce the first test dose of clotting factor within a couple of years of the bad news about AIDS, using hamster ovary cells as part of the production line. They administered the first dose to a human volunteer, a hemophiliac sufferer. The volunteer accepted the injection, then slowly seemed to fall asleep sitting up. Keyed up to point of near hysteria by hopes for the effectiveness of the product and anxiety for their volunteer, the biochemists asked more and more frantically, "Dave? Dave? Are you OK?" Dave slowly opened his eyes, made a chittering hamster noise, and burst into maniacal laughter.