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Nature 410, 622-625 (5 April 2001) | doi:10.1038/35070659

Open Innovation Challenges

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Can they rebuild us?

Peter Aldhous1

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The idea of therapeutic cloning, which offers the potential of growing replacement tissues perfectly matched to their recipients, is falling from favour. But there are alternatives, as Peter Aldhous found out.

Take two of the biological breakthroughs of the late 1990s and combine them to produce a medical miracle — that is the thinking behind therapeutic cloning. The achievements are the cloning technology that in February 1997 gave us Dolly the sheep1, and the successful creation the following year of cultures of human embryonic stem (ES) cells2.