Human Embryo Has Been Cloned

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A Human Embryo

Advanced Cell Technology (www.advancedcell.com) have announced that they have cloned an early human embryo from a adult cumulus cell nucleus.  The cumulus cells are cells that surround the egg when it is ovulated.  The furthest any of the cloned human embryos developed to was to 6 cells.  The research is primarily aimed at therapeutic cloning (producing cloned stem cells to cure disease), but it has also prompted hopes by certain infertile couples that they may be able to conceive a biologically related child via this technology. 

Advanced Cell Technology's announcement has been hailed as an incredible scientific achievement by some - and decried as a dangerous step by others.  Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), has stressed that its aim is to use the technology as a source of special cells that can be used in novel medical treatments, not to produce genetically identical children. 

The news has drawn swift protests from religious and political leaders, but ACT vice president Dr Robert Lanza said people should concentrate on the medical benefits that will come from being able to copy cells. 

"Our intention is not to create cloned human beings, but rather to make lifesaving therapies for a wide range of human disease conditions, including diabetes, strokes, cancer, Aids, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease." 

ACT reported its work in the electronic journal e-biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine. 

Not only did the team describe how it made embryo clones using nuclear transfer methods pioneered in animals, it also revealed details of how human eggs were encouraged to start dividing on their own - without fertilization from a sperm or the transfer of genetic material from another cell. 

This process known as parthenogenesis occurs in insects and microbes but not naturally in higher animals. Eggs usually dump half their genetic material but if gathered early enough contain a full set of genes, the researchers said.

"You hesitate to describe it as a virgin birth, but it is sort of in that vein," said John Rennie, editor-in-chief of Scientific American magazine, which also published a lay article by ACT on the same day as the company's technical paper appeared in e-biomed. 

"That is an amazing accomplishment in its own right and, like cloning, something that people once thought was impossible in mammals." 

Dr Ian Wilmut, who led the team that produced Dolly the sheep clone using the cell nuclear replacement technique at the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, UK, struck a note of caution over the ACT announcement. 

"It's really only a preliminary first step because the furthest that the embryo developed was to have six cells at a time when it should have had more than 200 - and it had clearly already died."  It's really only a preliminary first step.

Dr Wilmut said it would have been better if ACT had waited until its work was more advanced before making the announcement. 

"If they had reached the stage from which you could derive the stem cells that have such potential in medicine - that would have been of real interest." 

Embryonic stem cells are the "master cells" that have the potential to develop into virtually every other type of cell in the body. Scientists hope to be able to control the development of these cells so they can be used to replace the failing cells that cause degenerative diseases.

Researchers say that using a cloning process to get at these cells will ensure future treatments will match perfectly the genetic profile of patients - and will consequently work much better. 

In December 1998, researchers at Kyunghee University in South Korea claimed to have produced the world's first human embryo clone. The scientists involved said they destroyed the object soon after seeing it divide several times. 

Many researchers around the world doubted the experiment ever took place. 

ACT itself claimed in the November of that year that it had fused the genetic material from a human cell with the empty egg from a cow to make a hybrid embryo.

If ACT do succeed in producing full human blastocysts then the feasibility of therapeutic and reproductive cloning would be substantially increased.  Genetically identical stem cells could potentially be created to cure degenerative diseases (therapeutic cloning), and certain infertile couples could finally choose to conceive a genetically related child (reproductive cloning).  While both procedures are somewhat controversial, the substantial benefits for the patients and potential parents could be argued to outweigh the ethical cost.