First Australian pig clone

BresaGen, an Australian biotech company, has announced that it has produced Australia's first cloned pig. Working with the St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, BresaGen said that the piglet was cloned from cells that had been frozen in liquid nitrogen for two years. The piglet is now nearly six weeks old and is reported to be healthy and developing normally.

The first cloned pigs were announced over a year ago by researchers from PPL Therapeutics, the commercial wing of the Roslin Institute who cloned Dolly. Last month, PPL said that it had also created transgenic pig clones.

The new piglet was cloned using technology that may help prevent disease in animals, such as foot and mouth, and aid human organ transplants. BresaGen said that the cloning technology it used was different from that used to create Dolly: 'what works in sheep doesn't work in pigs, so we had to start from scratch', chief executive John Smeaton said.

The company has said that its pig cloning technology is potentially life-saving as it could mark a step closer to being able to use pigs as a source of organs for transplant into humans. Pigs are a potential organ source but they need to be genetically altered to prevent rejection by the human immune system. Professor Tony d'Apice from St Vincent's hospital said 'this cloning technology will provide a method whereby the function of one of the genes thought to be important in the rejection of these organs can be eliminated. It will be possible to produce pigs without this gene and provide donor organs more compatible for human transplantation.'