The Change Mariner: Korean Researchers Make Therapeutic Cloning Breakthrough

February 12, 2004

Korean Researchers Make Therapeutic Cloning Breakthrough

Researchers in South Korea have become the first to successfully clone a human embryo, and then cull from it master stem cells that many doctors consider key to one day creating customized cures for diabetes, Parkinson's and other diseases.
This is not cloning to make babies, but to create medicine.

It's sure to revive international controversy over whether to ban all human cloning, as the Bush administration wants, or to allow this "therapeutic cloning" that might eventually let patients grow their own replacement tissue.

Embryonic stem cells are the body's building blocks, cells from which all other tissue types spring. They're present in an embryo only days after conception and are ethically sensitive because culling stem cells destroys the embryo.

Scientists have used therapeutic cloning to partially cure laboratory mice with an immune system disease. And they know how to cull stem cells from human embryos left over in fertility clinics.

But attempts to clone human embryos-- so the resulting stem cells would be genetically identical to the patient who needs them -- have failed until now.

Scientists from Seoul National University say they succeeded largely because of using extremely fresh eggs donated by South Korean volunteers and gentler handling of the genetic material inside them.

Human Embryonic Stem Cells
Humana Press

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Stem Cell Biology (Cold Spring Harbor Monograph Series, 40)
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Amazon Price: $65.00

Human Embryonic Stem Cells: An Introduction to the Science and Therapeutic Potential
Jones & Bartlett Pub

Amazon Price: $34.95

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