Korean scientists have used cloned human embryos to derive tailor-made stem cells, a breakthrough with dramatic implications for the development of useful therapies that could help shift the debate over human cloning.
The researchers derived stem cells from patients with spinal cord injury, a congenital immune disorder and juvenile diabetes. The advance, announced Thursday, raises the stakes in the political and ethical argument surrounding embryonic stem-cell research. Once a pie-in-the-sky possibility, human cells now exist that could theoretically be transplanted back into patients without the fear of immune rejection, since as cloned cells they would be a genetic match.
Researchers must test the cells in animals before they can try the therapy in humans. But embryonic stem-cell researchers were shocked and delighted by the advance, which many had referred to as a distant possibility until they saw this study by Woo Suk Hwang and his colleagues at Seoul National University, which appears in the May 20 issue of Science. A little more than one year ago, Hwang and his colleagues derived the first stem cells from a cloned human embryo.
