IT HAS taken 18 months of wrangling and sensational tabloid headlines, but two UK research teams have been granted their wish. They will at last be able to try cloning 鈥渃ybrid鈥� embryos in the hope of shedding light on human neurodegenerative diseases and providing clues on how to reprogram skin and other cells.
鈥淭hey will clone cybrid embryos in the hope of shedding light on disease鈥�
On 17 January, the UK鈥檚 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority granted licences to make cybrids to teams led by Lyle Armstrong at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and Stephen Minger at King鈥檚 College London.
Advertisement
The teams will now use somatic cell nuclear transfer, the technique used to create Dolly the sheep, to fuse nuclear DNA from human skin cells with cow or rabbit eggs stripped of their own nucleus. The best case scenario is that the cybrids, which are 99.9 per cent human, will yield human embryonic stem cells, although there are serious doubts about whether it is in fact possible to create useful cybrids at all.
Stem Cells 鈥� Learn more about the promise and the controversy in our cutting edge special report .
GM Organisms 鈥� Is GM the future? Learn more in our continually updated special report.
