Monkey stem cells cloned
Patient-specific stem-cell lines now seem more likely than before, thanks to the discovery that primates' genomes can be reset to the primoridal state to sustain embryonic stem cells. Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University transferred the nuclei from cultured skin cells from an adult male monkey into 304 enucleated egg cells. They were able to coax 35 of these into blastocysts. They scooped out cells from 20 of the best blastocysts to make 2 stem cell lines carrying the same chromosomes as the male monkey (one line was genetically abnormal). The efficiency of eggs to blastocysts is much improved, but the overall efficiency is low. More work needs to be done.
“I’m delighted to hear this,” says Jose Cibelli of Michigan State University of the accomplishment. “But that's still too low to be justifiable for humans."
This work was first announced at a conference in June. It is now set to be published in Nature next week, as David Cyranoski reports. Not only did this paper go through the standard, rigorous peer-review, Nature also asked outside experts to carefully examine the cells to make sure they really had been produced through somatic cell nuclear transfer. That's because the stem-cell world has been rocked by fraudulent research. The rationale was explained further in an editorial in Nature.
Next week, Nature Reports Stem Cellswill have a longer story on the factors that led to success as well as an Inside the Paper revealing anonymous comments of the scientific experts who reviewed this paper.