Palscience

Researchers in Oregon say they have cracked the “primate barrier,” reporting yesterday that they had cloned monkey embryos and extracted stem cells - an advance other scientists said offered the strongest proof yet that the same feat can eventually be carried out with human cells.

“This demonstrates convincingly that embryonic stem cells can be produced from primates . . . and this means it should be feasible in humans,” said George Daley, president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research and a stem cell scientist at Children’s Hospital Boston. “There has never been a good reason to doubt that primate [cloning] could work, and this settles the issue.”

The groundbreaking work was quickly damned by opponents of the controversial process, which involves destruction of laboratory-created, early-stage embryos after harvesting them of stem cells.

In research published online by the journal Nature, scientists reported that the new clones were used to create batches of embryonic stem cells forged from monkey skin cells and unfertilized eggs.

Because monkeys are so similar to humans, the research at Oregon Health & Science University appears to mark a significant breakthrough toward creating human embryonic stem cells that are genetically matched to a particular patient. That feat has for years been the holy grail of medical researchers because the cells can replicate and produce the more specialized cells that comprise the blood, tissue, and organs.

Actual cloning of human embryos remains some time off because of ethical and technical hurdles. But scientists are pushing relentlessly toward that day.

“I am quite sure it will work in humans,” Shoukhrat Mitalipov, who led the Oregon team, told reporters in a telephone briefing.

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