- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists said Thursday they had used cloning technology
to fuse human and cow cells in an attempt to grow organs for transplant
in a laboratory dish.
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- The team at tiny biotech company Advanced
Cell Technology said the cells had grown as an embryo for a few days, then
reverted to a primordial state known as stem cells, which are capable of
growing into any kind of cell in the body.
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- Although they used the same method they
used to clone cows, the scientists at the privately held company, based
in Worcester, Massachusetts, say they have no intention of trying to create
a human clone.
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- Instead, they want to try to grow organs
and tissues in the lab for use in transplantation therapy.
-
- ``We will not use this technology to
clone human beings,'' Michael West, president and chief executive officer
of Advanced Cell Technology, vowed in a statement.
-
- The company has not submitted its research
for the standard scientific ``peer review'' process, when other experts
check to make sure it is legitimate work.
-
- First, they want to assess the public
response, said James Robl, a professor of animal science at the University
of Massachusetts who helped found the company, which has licensed and patented
the technology.
-
- Otherwise, the company may end up sinking
a lot of money into a project that the public will not tolerate.
-
- Reaction was fast and pronounced. ``This
is the most extraordinary single development in the history of biotechnology
because it now suggests that we can create new human-animal species,''
Jeremy Rifkin, a writer on biotechnology issues, said in a telephone interview.
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- ``I don't think we should go ahead with
research, around the world, until we take some time to think about it.''
Calling the idea ``dangerous and chilling,'' Rifkin said he would lobby
Congress to pass a law against such experiments.
-
- But Robl thinks the potential benefits
outweigh any initial distaste people might have for the idea of mixing
human and animal cells.
-
- ``Embryonic stem cells hold the promise
of providing an unlimited supply of cells that may be grown in the laboratory
into virtually any type of tissue for transplant use,'' he said.
-
- He foresees taking a few cells from a
patient and growing them perhaps into heart cells, for use in repairing
a damaged heart, or brain cells for injection into the damaged brains of
Parkinson's patients, or even into growing a whole organ such as a liver.
-
- Because the genetic material comes from
the donor, there would be no problem of rejection.
-
- Robl's team took a human cell -- in this
case a skin fibroblast cell -- and fused it using an electrical current
to a cow's egg that had its nucleus removed.
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- The human nucleus, which contains all
the genes that carry the ``road map'' for building a functioning body,
crossed into the hollowed-out cow egg. This process started the egg growing
and dividing almost as if it had been fertilized by a sperm.
-
- Although it started out looking like
an embryo, it later became a mass of stem cells.
-
- Earlier this month a team at the University
of Wisconsin at Madison said they grew human stem cells from human embryos
donated by infertile couples after fertility treatments.
-
- On their own the cells differentiated
into cartilage, bone, muscle and other kinds of cells and are still growing
in laboratory dishes.
-
- Their study, funded by Geron Corp (Nasdaq:GERN
- news), is farther down the road than Robl's. But their cells would be
foreign to the patient receiving them, since they contain the human genetic
material from someone else. There would be the problem of rejection just
as there is now with donated organs.
-
- Not so with cells cloned from the patient.
-
- Robl says his human-cow hybrid cells
-- made from cells donated by Jose Cibelli, one of the scientists on the
team -- died after a couple of weeks.
-
- ``If the cells get past this initial
hump, then they theoretically would be like normal human embryonic stem
cells and can be used just as other human embryonic stem cells can be used,''
Robl said. He said eventually the human genes would take over and only
a very small amount of cow DNA would remain.
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- He thinks this approach might be more
ethically acceptable than using human embryos. Currently U.S. federal funds
cannot be used to pay for such research. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/sc/story.html?s=v/nm/19981113/sc/clone_4.h
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