It followed through on Murphy's plan to invest in ProLinia. Scientists at another firm successfully cloned pigs for the first time this spring. PPL Therapeutics, to wide media attention, produced five healthy piglets from cloned embryos implanted in a surrogate mother. PPL plans to use its cloning technology for medical purposes, such as creating organs that can be harvested for humans. The births were a breakthrough, despite earlier success cloning sheep and cattle.
Hogs are much trickier to clone for a variety of biological reasons.
Smithfield invested in ProLinia because of its interest in agricultural cloning and because Murphy officials respected the company's top scientist, Steve Stice, Coffey said. The company wants to keep Smithfield from owning the company whole-hog, so it can sell clones to others. Despite PPL's success, ProLinia is three to eight years away from commercializing its technology. Because it needs technology that can reliably and efficiently clone pigs. Pig-produced medical parts usable by humans offer tasty profits for biotech companies.