A licence to extract stem cells from cloned human embryos has been granted to the creator of Dolly the sheep, Ian Wilmut. The purpose of the research is to investigate motor neurone disease.
On Tuesday, the UK's regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, granted the therapeutic cloning licence to Wilmut and colleagues Paul de Sousa at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, and Christopher Shaw at King's College London.
The one-year research licence is the second awarded in the UK that allows researchers to clone human embryos. The first was granted to scientists at the Newcastle Centre for Life in August 2004, to investigate embryonic development in order to develop treatments for serious diseases like diabetes.
Wilmut and his colleagues will take cells from patients with motor neurone disease (MND), and create cloned embryos using a standard technique called cell nuclear replacement.
This involves stripping a human egg of its nucleus and replacing it with the nucleus of the cell being cloned. The embryo is then artificially coaxed to divide as it would do naturally, producing stem cells. The stem cells will be coaxed into becoming neurons and then compared with neurons from people who lack the MND gene defect.
February 8, 2005
Human cloning licence awarded to Dolly creator
A licence to extract stem cells from cloned human embryos has been granted to the creator of Dolly the sheep, Ian Wilmut. The purpose of the research is to investigate motor neurone disease.
On Tuesday, the UK's regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, granted the therapeutic cloning licence to Wilmut and colleagues Paul de Sousa at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, and Christopher Shaw at King's College London.
The one-year research licence is the second awarded in the UK that allows researchers to clone human embryos. The first was granted to scientists at the Newcastle Centre for Life in August 2004, to investigate embryonic development in order to develop treatments for serious diseases like diabetes.
Wilmut and his colleagues will take cells from patients with motor neurone disease (MND), and create cloned embryos using a standard technique called cell nuclear replacement.
This involves stripping a human egg of its nucleus and replacing it with the nucleus of the cell being cloned. The embryo is then artificially coaxed to divide as it would do naturally, producing stem cells. The stem cells will be coaxed into becoming neurons and then compared with neurons from people who lack the MND gene defect.
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