Abstract

The invention relates to a method of producing proteins of biopharmaceutical interest from the mammary gland of non-transgenic animals. The genes which code for said proteins are transferred to the mammary epithelial cells using adenoviral vectors. Such vectors can be based on adenoviruses with defective replication, such as &Dgr;E1&Dgr;E3, or on adjuvant-dependent adenoviruses from which all or almost all of the adenoviral coding sequences have been eliminated. With said method, high levels of recombinant proteins can be produced in milk, thereby enabling the large-scale production of proteins of biopharmaceutical interest in the biologically active form thereof.