ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 2, 1997 TAG: 9703030069
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
Scientists in Oregon have produced monkeys from cloned embryos, the first time a species that closely related to human beings has been cloned, researchers said in interviews Saturday.
The scientists used a technique similar to the one that Scottish researchers announced last week had enabled them to clone a sheep. Experts said the cloning success in Oregon adds to a growing body of evidence that there are no insurmountable biological barriers to creating multiple copies of a human being.
``It demands that we take seriously the issue of human cloning,'' said Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania.
The two monkeys, born in August, were cloned from cells taken from embryos, not from an adult - a crucial difference between them and Dolly, the sheep cloned by the Scottish researchers. The cloned primates are not genetically identical to any adult monkey, an aspect of the sheep experiment that raised a host of thorny ethical issues.
Lead researcher Don Wolf, a senior scientist at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center in Beaverton and director of the human in-vitro fertilization laboratory at Oregon Health Sciences University in nearby Portland, said researchers do not plan to produce clones from adult monkeys.
``This is really an effort to see if we can create genetically identical monkeys for research,'' he said. Far fewer of these carbon-copy research animals would be needed in drug experiments, for example, because their sameness would eliminate much of the genetic variability that confounds such experiments, Wolf said. ``It would allow you to ask questions with fewer animals,'' he said.
The two monkeys created in Oregon are not identical to each other because they were cloned from different embryos. But researchers said the technique could be used to create eight or more identical monkeys from a single embryo, and that further advances could lead to the ability to make clones of adults, as well.
The work at the federally funded facility has yet to be published in a scientific journal.
The monkeys were created in a two-step technique. First, researchers created several monkey embryos using a standard in-vitro fertilization method of mixing eggs from a single female with sperm in a petri dish. Once the embryos had divided into eight cells, Wolf and colleagues teased apart the cells.
In the second step, the scientists took one full set of chromosomes from each embryo cell and inserted each batch into a fresh egg cell whose DNA had been removed. Each of those cells then had the potential to become a new embryo. The cells were implanted into females, three of whom became pregnant. One fetus died.
The two monkeys ``seem totally normal,'' Wolf said. Although they were carried by separate surrogate mothers, they are brother and sister because both embryos were created by mixing eggs and sperm from the same mother and father. If more than one cell from any single embryo had survived, the resulting newborns would have been genetically identical.
The same technique has already been used to clone embryos in other species less closely related to humans.
Scientists said that by adding the technology of genetic engineering, the cloning technique could allow scientists to grow colonies of identical animals with made-to-order characteristics. ``This is a step toward designing animals with specific diseases'' for drug testing and other purposes, said Dorothy Boatman, a reproductive biologist at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center in Madison. |Associated Press|
LONDON - The British government is cutting off funding to the research project that produced the first cloned mammal because it has been a success.
The decision, announced Saturday by the Ministry of Agriculture, disappointed Professor Grahame Bulfield, director of the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh. He said the ministry had financed the research for eight years and now provided 65 percent of its funding.
``I will move heaven and earth to keep resources in that cloning program,'' he told The Daily Telegraph.
The ministry said the institute's $411,000 grant will be halved in April and cut entirely by April 1998.
``We fund hundreds of projects at research institutions, and this one has been a success and the contract is being concluded. We funded it when it was a theoretical idea, and the commitment was never long-term,'' a ministry spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
``Perhaps if the project is to progress, then it is up to industry to look at the commercial elements and fund it that way,'' the spokesman added.
The rest of the institute's financing came from PPL Therapeutics, a Scottish biotechnology company headquartered outside Edinburgh, whose share prices have soared since last weekend's announcement that a sheep had been cloned from its mother.
Roslin scientists have said the cloning was the result of much hit-and-miss experimentation and needs to be refined through further research.
The lamb, now 7 months old and called Dolly, was cloned from a 6-year-old ewe, using tissue from the ewe's udder. Scientists previously thought a whole mammal could not be regenerated from mature body cells that were specialized for something other than reproduction.
News of the cloning - and the specter of possible cloning of human beings - generated widespread ethical debate and calls throughout the Western world for greater government control of cloning experiments.
The day after Dolly's existence was announced, President Clinton asked a bioethics advisory commission to review the implications for human beings. The 15-member European Union, which already bans human cloning, asked a scientific committee to see whether other forms of genetic manipulation should be regulated.
A poll released Saturday showed that 93 percent of Americans think cloning human beings is a bad idea; 66 percent think it was a bad idea to clone animals such as sheep; and 56 percent say they would not eat meat from cloned animals.
The TIME/CNN poll had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
Bulfield, however, said there had been an ``encouraging'' response from industry. Cloning could let companies precisely copy animals carrying proteins valuable in drug-making, or perfectly duplicate cattle that yield good beef.
Bulfield said he heard a rumor of government funding cuts in November but wasn't officially notified until last week. The Ministry of Agriculture insisted the institute had been notified in November that cuts were imminent.
With less than two months to find $205,000, Bulfield was scrambling.
``I am very concerned. This is a top-priority project at the institute. I do not know where the money will come from, but I will do everything in my power to allow it to continue,'' he said.
Dr. Ian Wilmut, who is leading the project, told Sky TV it was ``disappointing and somewhat ironic'' that news of the cuts started circulating just ``as we were having some startling success.''
LENGTH: Long : 127 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Dolly, the first genetically cloned mammal, smilesby CNBfor the camera Tuesday in Edinburgh, Scotland. The British
government is cutting off funding for such research. color.