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Published online 21 March 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.686
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Therapeutic cloning creates perfect match
Animal-specific stem cells treat Parkinson's symptoms in mice.
Researchers have used therapeutic cloning to transform a mouse's tail cells into ones that can treat it for disease. The study helps advance the prospect of creating cell lines perfectly matched to human patients.
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you guys ain't gonna make it,believe in me/
How will this be translated into a safe and effective therapy for Parkinson's in humans - it seems limited by a number of factors, not least by nuclear transfer in human cells. The FDA is still holding back on this type of work entering the 'real' therapeutic arena and for good reason. G MacColl
I have always been a reluctant supporter of therapeutic cloning; however, I am an even bigger supporter of alternative methods. I have recently heard of techniques that can reprogram an individual’s somatic cells to revert back to an embryonic state without the use of cloning. I would like to see them try such cellular reprogramming on these mouse models.
Sounds like science is well on it's way to advanced therapeutic interventions that well may find health care delivery in a whole new era for some very serious diseases, like when polio was beyond our technical skills to treat it effectively, and along came new insight into antiviral therapy. This seems to be our medical destiny, and to eliminate more suffering, should it not be?
Whether similarly inefficient up to date, both the therapeutic cloning and the reprogramming technique of adult cells into induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells, the latter overcomes elegantly major ethical issues. This aspects should be kept in focus, since many researchers, but also many potential patients, may not accept therapeutic cloning. The reprogramming technique ofends neither researchers, nor patients of any political, religious or social condition. This controversy may not give rise again to a 'political' positioning of the scientific community.