BBC news web site announced that US researchers have managed to extract useful component from yeast to secrete a body chemical called a glycoprotein.
Yeast and similar proteins are the raw materials in many modern drugs, but making them is currently costly and labour-intensive.
The method, described in the journal Science, may lead to cheaper drugs.
Glycoproteins have a sugar coating which is key to the way they behave once they are in the body.
The researchers, from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, subtly changed the DNA of the yeast Pichia pastoris so that they produced human versions of these chemicals.
The yeast seems able to produce glycoproteins which are uniform - a potential godsend for the pharmaceutical industry.
In theory, patients with a wide variety of conditions - from cancer to haemophilia, could benefit
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