Baptist Press | Nov. 19, 2007

Cloning pioneer Ian Wilmut says he will no longer use in stem cell research the technique that resulted in the creation of Dolly the sheep but will instead pursue another form of experimentation that does not require the destruction of embryos.

Wilmut’s announcement led some to speculate it might mark the “beginning of the end,” as the British newspaper The Telegraph described it, for research, or therapeutic, cloning.

Wilmut, who had received a license two years ago in Great Britain to clone human embryos, said he has discontinued his experiments in the cloning field in order to work on a technique developed in Japan that he believes has more potential to produce stem cells that could treat debilitating diseases, The Telegraph reported Nov. 16.

The method Wilmut believes has a greater capability to result in therapies has been described as cell regression. The technique, pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University, has been shown in experiments with mice to enable skin cells to be converted into cells with embryonic-like qualities, according to the newspaper. Such cells would have the advantage of not being rejected because they are the patient’s own cells.

“The work which was described from Japan of using a technique to change cells from a patient directly into stem cells without making an embryo has got so much more potential,” Wilmut said, according to BBC News. “Even though it’s only been described for the mouse, when we were considering which option to pursue, whether to clone or whether to copy the work in Japan, we decided to copy the work in Japan.”

The announcement of Wilmut’s abandonment of cloning came a few days after it was reported that Oregon researchers had cloned embryos from primates for the first time in experiments with a 10-year-old rhesus macaque monkey. Scientists treated the report as a significant breakthrough, since it had been unclear if the cloning of primate embryos, including those of human beings, would be possible.

. . . more