It seems a remarkable coincidence that two independent research groups working thousands of miles apart should both announce breakthroughs on cloned pigs within hours of each other.
The British researchers at PPL Therapeutics plc claim that its January 2nd announcement was dictated by London stock market rules and had nothing to do with the preplanned US announcement on January 3rd.
The US researchers believe, however, that it was a spoiler to try and get a research breakthrough into the news first.
"The buggers threw out a release to screw us up," a senior vice-president at Porter Novelli, Ms Susan Hayes, said yesterday. "They were not the first, we were the first." She was acting as spokeswoman for the US researchers, Immerge BioTherapeutics Inc and the University of Missouri-Columbia.
It was no secret that the competing groups were both working towards cloning a "knock-out" pig for possible use in human organ transplantation. PPL, near Edinburgh, cloned Dolly the sheep with the Roslin Institute and continued cloning research with other species.
Immerge announced a collaboration with another US company, Infigen, last May, announcing plans to clone knock-out pigs for xenotransplantation.
The US pigs were born on September 21st and, once they were confirmed as true clones, the researchers decided to publish results in a peer-reviewed journal, Science.
"We knew there was a danger when we went the peer review route," Ms Hayes said.
The British pigs were born on December 25th, and it took some days to confirm they were clones, said Mr Alistair Mackinnon-Musson, spokesman for PPL.
The rules of the stock exchange required research companies to release news of breakthroughs as soon as possible, he said.
"Yesterday was the first day back after the holidays to make an announcement on the stock exchange," he added. "That was the first opportunity we could have done it."
The exchange's interest is not misplaced, given that PPL's share value rocketed by almost 50 per cent yesterday, rising 22.5p to 77.5p.
He said the PPL announcement had no connection to yesterday's US announcement and the publication this morning in Science. "We were extremely aware of them," Ms Hayes added yesterday.
Ms Hayes admitted experiencing "a little bit of both amusement and annoyance" at the PPL announcement. The researchers remained happy to have gone the reviewed journal route, she added.
