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Dolly scientist to combat human diseases
THE scientist who created Dolly, the cloned sheep, has expressed the hope that the licence he had been granted to clone human embryos for research into motor neurone disease would pave the way for researchers to take an “invaluable shortcut” in tackling a range of diseases.
Ian Wilmut was recently granted only the second licence in the UK to clone human embryos for medical research since cloning was legalized in 2001. Alongside colleagues from King’s College, London, Prof Wilmut plans to use the techniques he pioneered when he cloned the world’s first mammal in 1996 to investigate the cause of motor neurone disease (MND).
The researchers will use therapeutic cloning, or cell nuclear replacement, to generate stem cells that carry the genetic defect which causes MND. These stem cells can then be turned into motor neurones, allowing researchers to investigate what causes the cells to degenerate and produce the disease.
Prof Wilmut said the technique, which does not involve reproductive cloning, will be particularly valuable for motor neurone disease since, despite two decades of research, little progress had been made in finding treatments. Christopher Shaw, from King’s College, added: “We have only come up with one gene, which affects around 3 per cent of all cases. We hope that cloning technology will allow us to bypass the gene-hunting step and make much more rapid progress.”
About 1,200 people die from MND each year in the UK, 100,000 worldwide, and most live for less than five years after diagnosis. Brian Dickie, director of research at the Motor Neurone Disease Association, said the decision by the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to grant Prof Wilmut a licence means “we are a step closer to medical research that has the potential to revolutionize the future treatment of motor neurone disease”.
Prof Wilmut said: “I think the techniques we are investigating could prove hugely beneficial to a group of diseases where people have not been able to identify the gene responsible. It will, hopefully, allow researchers to take an invaluable shortcut.”
Angela McNab, chief executive of the HFEA, said: “Following careful review of the medical, scientific, legal and ethical aspects of this application, we felt it was appropriate to grant the Roslin Institute a one-year licence for this research into the disease.” Funding has still to be secured for the research, which will take far longer than the one year allowed by the HFEA.
However, when it begins, researchers will grow skin or blood cells in the lab from people who have the inherited form of MND. They will then remove the nucleus, where the genetic information is stored, from an unfertilized egg and replace it with the nucleus from a cell grown from an MND patient. Embryonic stem cells can then be removed and directed to become motor neurones. The remaining cells are destroyed.
The technique is controversial and anti-cloning groups have condemned the HFEA’s decision. A spokesman for Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: “Human cloning remains dangerous, undesirable and unnecessary. Alternative therapies and research with adult and umbilical cord blood stem cells are already providing safe and ethical solutions.”— Dawn/The Guardian News Service
From fiction to reality
THE idea of cloning a human being was once firmly rooted in the pages of science fiction. But since 1997 when Dolly the sheep became the first mammal to be cloned, replicating humans has increasingly become a matter of when, not if.
Cloned animals take all their genes from a single parent, while in normal reproduction the genes are a mix from both parents. To create a clone, DNA is extracted from an adult cell and placed into the hollowed out egg of the species being cloned.
Then tiny bursts of electricity are used so that the two become a single cell which is then planted into a womb that will carry the clone through to birth. Attempts to clone humans require many embryos and scientists fear physical and emotional complications.
The road to human cloning began in 1952 when scientists replaced the nucleus from a frog egg with the nucleus of an embryonic frog cell and got the egg to develop into a tadpole. In 1975, a US scientist cloned tadpoles after transferring cell nuclei from adult frogs.
What brought the idea of human cloning closer to reality was the breakthrough by scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland who created Dolly from an ordinary adult cell. The race to clone a human had begun, with all its ethical, moral and scientific problems.
Scientists at an array of institutes have cloned various species of animals. So far scientists have cloned sheep, mice, cows, pigs, goats and cats. In 1998, an American, Dr Richard Seed, announced that he was ready to begin experiments on cloning a human being.
The same year an American billionaire reportedly paid a cloning expert $5m to recreate his favourite pet. Scientists in Massachusetts produced cloned human embryos to use as a source of stem cells, but the cloned embryos never grew bigger than six cells. And in January 2001, an Italian fertility expert said he would clone babies for infertile couples. — Dawn/The Guardian News Service
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