Under one scenario, a woman with heart disease might have her own eggs collected and activated in the laboratory to yield blastocysts. Scientists could then use combinations of growth factors to coax stem cells isolated from the blastocysts to become cardiac muscle cells growing in laboratory dishes that could be implanted back into the woman to patch a diseased area of the heart. Using a similar technique, called androgenesis, to create stem cells to treat a man would be trickier. But it might involve transferring two nuclei from the man¿s sperm into a contributed egg that had been stripped of its nucleus.
Researchers have previously reported prompting eggs from mice and rabbits to divide into embryos by exposing them to different chemicals or physical stimuli such as an electrical shock. As early as 1983, Elizabeth J. Robertson, who is now at Harvard University, demonstrated that stem cells isolated from parthenogenetic mouse embryos could form a variety of tissues, including nerve and muscle.
In our parthenogenesis experiments, we exposed 22 eggs to chemicals that changed the concentration of charged atoms called ions inside the cells. After five days of growing in culture dishes, six eggs had developed into what appeared to be blastocysts, but none clearly contained the so-called inner cell mass that yields stem cells.
Why We Did It
WE ARE EAGER FOR THE DAY when we will be able to offer therapeutic cloning or cell therapy arising from parthenogenesis to sick patients. Currently our efforts are focused on diseases of the nervous and cardiovascular systems and on diabetes, autoimmune disorders, and diseases involving the blood and bone marrow.
Once we are able to derive nerve cells from cloned embryos, we hope not only to heal damaged spinal cords but to treat brain disorders such as Parkinson¿s disease, in which the death of brain cells that make a substance called dopamine leads to uncontrollable tremors and paralysis. Alzheimer¿s disease, stroke and epilepsy might also yield to such an approach.
Besides insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells for treating diabetes, stem cells from cloned embryos could also be nudged to become heart muscle cells as therapies for congestive heart failure, arrhythmias and cardiac tissue scarred by heart attacks.
 CLONING AND THE LAW |
A potentially even more interesting application could involve prompting cloned stem cells to differentiate into cells of the blood and bone marrow. Autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis arise when white blood cells of the immune system, which arise from the bone marrow, attack the body¿s own tissues. Preliminary studies have shown that cancer patients who also had autoimmune diseases gained relief from autoimmune symptoms after they received bone marrow transplants to replace their own marrow that had been killed by high-dose chemotherapy to treat the cancer. Infusions of blood-forming, or hematopoietic, cloned stem cells might "reboot" the immune systems of people with autoimmune diseases.
But are cloned cells¿or those generated through parthenogenesis¿normal? Only clinical tests of the cells will show ultimately whether such cells are safe enough for routine use in patients, but our studies of cloned animals have shown that clones are healthy. In the November 30, 2001, issue of Science, we reported on our success to date with cloning cattle. Of 30 cloned cattle, six died shortly after birth, but the rest have had normal results on physical exams, and tests of their immune systems show they do not differ from regular cattle. Two of the cows have even given birth to healthy calves.
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3 Comments
Add CommentCould you clone out a healthy kidney for a patient who's gonna face renal failure? It's much better than transplantation, I think.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery day in so many ways, Science is putting Science Fiction out of business!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishow long the result of this expermint will succed
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