Palscience

LONDON, England (CNN) — Ever wanted to be a new you? Recent developments in cloning mean that day might be possible without therapy, a new diet or fitness regime.

Earlier this week a team in the U.S. led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon National Primate Research Center, announced they had created the first cloned monkey embryo and extracted stem cells from it.

While a scientific breakthrough in its own right, it also brings the possibility of curing genetic diseases, growing new organs and even making a carbon copy of human beings one step closer.

There is still a long way to go, with many technical and ethical dilemmas to overcome. The advancements in cloning have been slow and painstaking and prior claims to have developed cloned human cells found to be false; Dolly the sheep — the first cloned animal — was created over 10 years ago, and the only previous claim of human embryo cloning by South Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang in 2004, was discredited.

Mitalipov’s breakthrough was the result of merging skin cells of a 9-year-old rhesus macaque male with unfertilized monkey eggs that had the DNA removed.

It is a technique called nuclear transfer — the same used to create Dolly the sheep — and until Mitalipov’s research there had been skepticism over whether a primate could be cloned in the same manner.

The next challenge is whether or not it can be done successfully with human cells.

“If cloning embryonic stem cells is successful, I would predict it would become a much larger component of stem cell technology because with it you can effectively study a patient in a whole range of different ways in the lab. It opens up all sorts of possibilities,” Dr. Robin Lovell-Badge of the Royal Society told CNN.

While cloning is just one part of stem cell research, it has been touted as having enormous potential as a cure for all manner of diseases. As the source of every cell, tissue and organ in the body, their medical application has the potential to repair damaged tissue, regrow internal organs and cure currently incurable diseases like Cystic Fibrosis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

“Therapeutic cloning will hopefully be the solution for all the problems that have plagued transplant medicine for many years — the shortage of tissue and rejection. Stem cells lines are basically immortal and with them we can turn them into any cell type,” Robert Lanza, chief scientist for Advance Cell Technology, a U.S. company involved in regenerative medicine.

Continue Reading