UK: Scientists in Newcastle have successfully cloned a human embryo, a breakthrough that places Britain at the forefront of the highly controversial field of embryonic stem cell technology.
The clone was created as part of the Newcastle group's research into new treatments for diabetes. The team, lead by Miodrag Stojkovic at Newcastle University and Alison Murdoch at the Newcastle NHS Fertility Centre, was the first in Europe to be given the go-ahead to clone embryos for research last year, after being granted a licence by the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).
Only one other group in the world, lead by scientists in South Korea, has perfected the technique to clone human embryos.
That team, lead by Woo Suk Hwang at Seoul University yesterday announced going one step further than the Newcastle researchers by creating stem cells tailored to patients with specific medical conditions.
Dr Hwang took skin cells from patients suffering from spinal cord injuries or a variety of genetic disorders and used the cloning process to produce stem cells matched to each.
Because the stem cells were cloned from the patients' own skin cells, they would not be rejected by the body if used in any future therapy. Their study appears in the US journal Science.
The Newcastle team's work was praised by scientists who believe embryonic stem cells, which can be extracted from cloned embryos, will pave the way to cure some of the most intractable medical conditions, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's disease and even paralysis.