Monkeys are closer to human biology.
The technique has so far produced only one living rhesus monkey, a female named Tetra, but Professor Gerald Schatten said that four more twinned infants are on the way. Schatten, a researcher at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, said the goal is to produce identical monkeys that could be used to perfect new therapies for human disease. The study appears Friday in the journal Science . Most medical therapies are now first tested in mice, but monkeys would be more reliable in developing daring new techniques such as gene therapy or growing new organs from stem cells, said Schatten. The monkeys could fill that scientific gap.