American scientists say they have tricked a monkey's egg into becoming an embryo without being fertilised by sperm, and then taken stem cells from it to grow into new organ tissues.
The scientists, from Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Massachusetts, reported the work in the journal Science. They believe that the technique might bypass ethical objections to embryo research and stem cell derivation in the US. Parthenogenic eggs, those which become embryos without sperm, cannot produce offspring in mammals. In theory, taking cells from embryos created by the technique does not kill an embryo that could survive in the womb.
ACT, which caused controversy last year when it announced it had created the world's first cloned human embryos, used chemicals to trigger parthenogenesis in the egg. Stem cells from the monkey 'embryo' - the only one created in 77 attempts - were coaxed into growing into brain, heart and other tissue cells. Team leader Jose Cibelli says he is '100% sure this will work in humans' to create stem cells.
Meanwhile, ACT has also announced that it has grown miniature kidney-like organs using stem cells from cloned cow embryos. The tiny kidneys appear to have some of the functions of real kidneys. So far, the work has not been published in a scientific journal or reviewed by scientists other than those at ACT. Robert Lanza, the scientist in charge of the study said 'there are many, many years of work ahead of us. These are exciting but very preliminary data'.
Sources and References
-
Unfertilised monkey eggs give stem cells
-
Test tube kidneys created
-
Monkey eggs yield valuable cells, company says.
-
Scientists claim an advance in therapeutic cloning
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.