UCSF is back in the human cloning [SCNT] business
Further to the January 11, 2006 article by Terri Somers in the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Monterey Herald-Tribune is repeating a Chronicle story that UCSF is back in the SCNT cloning business.
The article states:
University of California-San Francisco scientists are attempting to use controversial cloning techniques to generate human embryonic stem cell lines, resuming an effort shelved as a failure five years ago.
At least half a dozen other groups in the United States and abroad also are getting involved in such work, signaling a renewed global push to achieve what experimenters in South Korea falsely claimed to have done last year.
The ultimate goal ranks among the most important in experimental biology: to create "patient-specific" stem cell lines to study how diseases develop and to make transplant cells matched to a patient's own genes, thus avoiding the usual risks of rejection.
UCSF's project is the only one of its kind on the West Coast, although this type of work also is being pursued by researchers in San Diego and is expected to be a key priority of the California Proposition 71 program.
The first stage of the work at UCSF is being backed by private donations, and the experimental protocol has passed all the necessary ethical approvals. The research team is led by Renee Reijo Pera, a UCSF associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences. She also is co-director of the UCSF Human Embryonic Stem Cell Center.
The human eggs required to carry out the work are being obtained now through UCSF's in-vitro fertilization clinic. Key pieces of laboratory equipment have been ordered and are expected to arrive in June. The first of the donated eggs are expected to be transferred to the researchers as early as Monday, May 8, 2006.
One notes that the article suggests that the UCSF research will be similar in format to what Hwang Woo-Suk reported in his FIRST paper in Science in 2004:
For now, the same IVF patients providing the eggs also are donating the adult-cell DNA, which the researchers plan to obtain by scraping a few cells from inside each donor's cheek.
Thus, the study is LIMITED to egg-bearing (female) patients, and one will have to address the parthenogenesis issues.
The article also states:
The project has roots in an effort conducted at UCSF in 1999 and early 2001 that failed to produce any of the prized stem cell lines. [Results not published.]
In May 2005, a team in South Korea led by veterinarian Woo Suk Hwang, announced to great acclaim that it had produced cloned embryonic stem cell lines using SCNT, and moreover had done so with far fewer human eggs than anyone thought possible. Those successes proved illusory -- the results were faked. [In the experiments in Korea, more eggs were used than reported, and NO patient-specific cell lines were actually obtained. Unlike the paper in 2004, Hwang claimed cell lines from male somatic tissue donors in the 2005 paper. The initial UCSF effort will apparently not be trying to do this.]
Now, scientists are hoping to achieve genuine success through improved techniques. In fact, some of the cloning methods developed in South Korea may turn out to be useful, Kriegstein said, when coupled with better cell-culture methods.
The article suggests other research groups are entering the SCNT effort:
Separate teams are pursuing essentially the same goal as UCSF, including scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Mass. A formal announcement is expected within a few weeks. The effort reportedly will go beyond UCSF's project by recruiting young women to donate their eggs, an invasive procedure that involves hormonal stimulation of the ovaries, posing ''a much more difficult and complex'' set of ethical issues, said Dr. Bernard Lo, who chaired the UCSF bioethics review.
The article states:
University of California-San Francisco scientists are attempting to use controversial cloning techniques to generate human embryonic stem cell lines, resuming an effort shelved as a failure five years ago.
At least half a dozen other groups in the United States and abroad also are getting involved in such work, signaling a renewed global push to achieve what experimenters in South Korea falsely claimed to have done last year.
The ultimate goal ranks among the most important in experimental biology: to create "patient-specific" stem cell lines to study how diseases develop and to make transplant cells matched to a patient's own genes, thus avoiding the usual risks of rejection.
UCSF's project is the only one of its kind on the West Coast, although this type of work also is being pursued by researchers in San Diego and is expected to be a key priority of the California Proposition 71 program.
The first stage of the work at UCSF is being backed by private donations, and the experimental protocol has passed all the necessary ethical approvals. The research team is led by Renee Reijo Pera, a UCSF associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences. She also is co-director of the UCSF Human Embryonic Stem Cell Center.
The human eggs required to carry out the work are being obtained now through UCSF's in-vitro fertilization clinic. Key pieces of laboratory equipment have been ordered and are expected to arrive in June. The first of the donated eggs are expected to be transferred to the researchers as early as Monday, May 8, 2006.
One notes that the article suggests that the UCSF research will be similar in format to what Hwang Woo-Suk reported in his FIRST paper in Science in 2004:
For now, the same IVF patients providing the eggs also are donating the adult-cell DNA, which the researchers plan to obtain by scraping a few cells from inside each donor's cheek.
Thus, the study is LIMITED to egg-bearing (female) patients, and one will have to address the parthenogenesis issues.
The article also states:
The project has roots in an effort conducted at UCSF in 1999 and early 2001 that failed to produce any of the prized stem cell lines. [Results not published.]
In May 2005, a team in South Korea led by veterinarian Woo Suk Hwang, announced to great acclaim that it had produced cloned embryonic stem cell lines using SCNT, and moreover had done so with far fewer human eggs than anyone thought possible. Those successes proved illusory -- the results were faked. [In the experiments in Korea, more eggs were used than reported, and NO patient-specific cell lines were actually obtained. Unlike the paper in 2004, Hwang claimed cell lines from male somatic tissue donors in the 2005 paper. The initial UCSF effort will apparently not be trying to do this.]
Now, scientists are hoping to achieve genuine success through improved techniques. In fact, some of the cloning methods developed in South Korea may turn out to be useful, Kriegstein said, when coupled with better cell-culture methods.
The article suggests other research groups are entering the SCNT effort:
Separate teams are pursuing essentially the same goal as UCSF, including scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Mass. A formal announcement is expected within a few weeks. The effort reportedly will go beyond UCSF's project by recruiting young women to donate their eggs, an invasive procedure that involves hormonal stimulation of the ovaries, posing ''a much more difficult and complex'' set of ethical issues, said Dr. Bernard Lo, who chaired the UCSF bioethics review.
posted by Lawrence B. Ebert at 3:40 PM
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