Monkey embryo cloned

Primates have been very
difficult to clone.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

After years of false starts and an international scientific scandal, researchers said Wednesday they have achieved a feat that some scientists believed was impossible — cloning a monkey embryo from a skin cell of an adult and using it to harvest embryonic stem cells.

Scientists previously have cloned embryos and animals from a variety of species, including rats, dogs and cattle. But primates — the family that includes monkeys and humans — have proved remarkably resistant to the most sophisticated techniques in the cloner’s arsenal.

Reproductive biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health & Science University and his colleagues reported in the online version of the journal Nature that they have cloned rhesus macaque embryos using DNA from skin cells in the ear of a 9-year-old male. The resulting stem cells grew into viable heart and nerve cells, among others.

“This is a giant step toward showing that human therapeutic cloning is possible,” said Dr. Robert Lanza, who is trying to produce human embryonic stem cells at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., and was not involved in the research.

Work has begun to use the new technique to clone human embryos, although the process remains incredibly inefficient. Even so, Mitalipov said, “I am quite sure that it will work in humans.”

The technical feat is a breakthrough in efforts to use cloned human embryos for the purpose of creating stem-cell lines that are genetically matched to sick patients so the cells will not be rejected.

Although clinical applications of the technology are still years away, some preliminary studies suggest that the cells, which have the potential to grow into any type of cell in the body, could be used to treat a range of diseases, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and a host of others.

Creating stem cells through therapeutic cloning is particularly controversial because the technology theoretically could lead to the birth of a cloned baby. None of the researchers said they were planning to clone children.