U.S. Scientists to Clone Human Embryos

By Marie McCullough, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Jun. 6–Two American research teams, one on each coast, said Tuesday they are trying to clone human embryos, then extract stem cells genetically matched to patients.

Scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and the University of California at San Francisco said their goal is to create embryonic stem cell colonies to model certain diseases. That could lead to stem cell therapies, perhaps a decade or more from now.

The mere pursuit of those goals is controversial. The field remains under a cloud cast by disgraced South Korean researchers, who a year ago published a fraudulent paper that claimed to do what the Americans are now attempting. Some conservative groups oppose the research — and government rules block federal funding of it — because it requires destroying human embryos.

What’s more, the technology to achieve key steps in the process of “therapeutic cloning” is hit or miss — or nonexistent.

Still, the researchers said they are in this for the long haul. Harvard’s Douglas Melton, co-director of the stem cell institute, and Kevin Eggan, a molecular biologist, will initially focus on diabetes — a disease that afflicts two of Melton’s childen. Eggan also plans to try to make stem cell lines for studying amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

George Daly, a Children’s Hospital of Boston researcher affiliated with the Harvard institute, will study blood diseases such as sickle cell anemia and leukemia.

“We are convinced that working with embryonic stem cells holds tremendous promise for treatment of a host of currently intractable and incurable diseases,” Harvard University Provost Steven Hyman said yesterday.

At UCSF, researchers hope to model neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease.

“We see this not only as a window into the mechanisms of disease, but also a platform for drug discovery,” said Arnold Kriegstein, director of UCSF’s Institute for Regeneration Medicine.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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