1998 Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved. Scientists at the Massachusetts-based biotech company Advanced Cell Technology Thursday said they had fused human cells into cow eggs to grow stem cells for tissue transplants, not to grow an embryo that would essentially be a human clone.
Stem cells are capable of growing into any kind of cell in the body.
Scientists want to harvest them as tissue transplants to treat ailments ranging from Parkinson's disease, caused when certain brain cells die, to the type of diabetes caused when the immune system destroys pancreatic cells. James Robl, Jose Cibelli and colleagues took some of Cibelli's cells, either from inside his cheek or from his leg, hollowed-out cow eggs and used a pulse of electricity to get the nuclei of the human cells to fuse into the cow eggs. The cells started developing just as if they had been fertilised. Other scientists at the University of Wisconsin beat them to the punch last week, by growing such stem cells from embryos donated at fertility clinics. They, too, hope to grow tissues for transplantation.