Big Leap in Therapeutic Cloning

South Korean researchers have reported success in using therapeutic cloning to transform skin samples into 11 embryonic stem cells that are genetic matches of 11 patients.

The researchers worked with eggs from female donors and obtained skin cells from male and female patients whose ages ranged from two to 56. Cloning, by somatic cell nuclear transfer, produced 11 human embryos, from which the researchers extracted the 11 cell lines, each an exact match for one of the patients involved. In the future, this means that replacement cells could be developed that are identical to ones lost by a patient. In the current experiment, the patients who provided skin cells included people suffering from juvenile diabetes, spinal cord injury, and congenital immune deficiency. The achievement was reported in the May 19, 2005, online edition of Science.

The new experiment took place in the laboratory of Dr. Woo Suk Hwang, of Seoul National University (Seoul, Korea). In 2004, Dr. Hwang and colleagues reported that they had succeeded in making a single stem cell line from a cloned embryo, but little notice was given to their work, since they used 248 human eggs to produce a single stem cell line. Now, with their new achievement, the biotechnology community is suddenly paying a lot of attention.

This time, the scientists used improvements in growing cells and breaking open embryos, using only an average of 17 eggs per stem cell line. According to Dr. Davor Solter, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology (Freiberg, Germany), it now appears that it is much more efficient to clone and obtain human stem cells than it is to do that same experiment in animals.




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Seoul National University