Cloning Yields Human-Rabbit Hybrid Embryo

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 14, 2003; Page A04


Scientists in China have, for the first time, used cloning techniques
to create hybrid embryos that contain a mix of DNA from both humans
and rabbits, according to a report in a scientific journal that has
reignited the smoldering ethics debate over cloning research.



More than 100 of the hybrids, made by fusing human skin cells with
rabbit eggs, were allowed to develop in laboratory dishes for several
days before the scientists destroyed them to retrieve so-called
embryonic stem cells from their interiors. Although scientists in
Massachusetts had previously mixed human cells and cow eggs in a
similar attempt to make hybrid embryos as a source of stem cells,
those experiments were not successful.

Researchers said yesterday they were hopeful that the rabbit work
would lead to a new and plentiful source of embryonic stem cells for
research and, eventually, for medical use. But theologians and others
decried the work as unethical.

Some wondered aloud what, exactly, such a creature would be if it
were transferred to a womb to develop to term.

The vast majority of the DNA in the embryos is human, with a small
percentage of genetic material -- called mitochondrial DNA --
contributed by the rabbit egg. No one knows if such an embryo could
develop into a viable fetus, though some experiments with other
species suggest it would not.

Congress has been mulling legislation for years that would outlaw
certain human cloning experiments, with some opposed to any creation
of cloned embryos for research and others sympathetic to research
uses as long as the embryos are not allowed to grow into cloned
babies. No law has been passed, however, in part because of
researchers' warnings that the proposed restrictions are so far-
reaching that they would hobble development of new medical
treatments.

The new work, led by Hui Zhen Sheng of Shanghai Second Medical
University, appears in the latest issue of Cell Research and was
highlighted in a news report in the journal Nature. Cell Research is
a peer-reviewed -- if little-known in the United States -- bimonthly
scientific journal affiliated with the Shanghai Institute of Cell
Biology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Some researchers
yesterday said they were frustrated by the lack of details in the
paper.

The team said it retrieved foreskin tissue from two 5-year-old boys
and two men, and facial tissue from a 60-year-old woman, as a source
of skin cells. They fused those cells with New Zealand rabbit eggs
from which the vast majority of rabbit DNA had been removed. More
than 400 of those new, fused entities grew into early embryos, and
more than 100 survived to the blastocyst stage -- the point at which
coveted stem cells begin to form.

The approach could help scientists wishing to mass-produce human
embryos as sources of human embryonic stem cells. Stem cells can
morph into all kinds of tissues and may be able to reverse the
effects of various degenerative diseases. But to make cloned embryos,
scientists need both normal body cells -- such as skin cells -- and
egg cells, which have the unique capacity to "reprogram" the genes in
body cells and make them behave as though they were embryo cells.

Because human egg cells are difficult and costly to retrieve from
women's ovaries -- and because human egg retrieval poses risks to the
donors -- scientists have been wanting to know whether animal eggs
may serve as well. A major question has been whether the remnants of
mitochondrial DNA that typically remain in an animal egg would be
compatible with the nuclear DNA contributed by the human cell.

The new work suggests that the answer to that question is yes,
scientists said -- though with a number of caveats. Most important,
researchers said, the paper stops short of proving beyond a doubt
that the stem cells retrieved from the hybrid embryos are truly
capable of growing for long periods of time in lab dishes, and that
they can turn into every known kind of cell.

Even so, said Douglas Melton, a Harvard University cell biologist and
cloning expert, the work is a big advance because it offers a new
system for exploring the mechanisms by which egg cells get adult
cells to act in embryonic ways. That could provide deep insights into
human development, wound healing and tissue regeneration.

He noted that although this is the first creation of a
human "chimeric" embryo -- a reference to the fabulous chimera of
Greek mythology, which had a lion's head, a goat's body and a
serpent's tail -- it is not the first time scientists have blended
human cells into lab animals. Some mice, for example, have been
endowed with human brain cells or portions of the human immune system
for research.

The Chinese work, Melton said, is "extremely interesting, and I hope
they pursue it."

R. Alta Charo, an associate dean of law and professor of bioethics at
the University of Wisconsin at Madison, noted that the work passed
muster with Chinese ethics authorities, who had demanded, among other
things, that the embryos not be allowed to grow more than 14 days.

"Short of putting one of these embryos into a woman's body for
development to term, I don't think this work harms anyone alive,"
Charo said.

She said the experiments should force opponents of cloning research
to identify more clearly than they have until now exactly where they
would draw the line against human embryo cloning -- in effect: How
human does an embryo have to be to have the moral standing these
advocates confer on embryos?

Richard Doerflinger, of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said
he felt certain that the human-rabbit embryos were human enough to
deserve protections.

"I think because all the nuclear DNA is human," Doerflinger
said, "we'd consider this an organism of the human species."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55911-2003Aug13.html



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