The Australian government has issued its first licence allowing
scientists to create cloned human embryos to try and obtain
embryonic stem cells.
The in vitro-fertilisation firm Sydney IVF was granted the licence
and reportedly has access to 7,200 human eggs for its
research.
If the firm is successful it would be a world first, the Australian
government's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC),
which granted the licence, said on Wednesday.
Scientists in other countries have made stem cells they believe are
similar to embryonic cells using a variety of techniques, but none
have been able to extract embryonic stem cells from cloned human
embryos.
An Australian ban on the research, known as therapeutic cloning or
somatic cell nuclear transfer, was lifted in December 2006 after a
rare conscience vote in the national parliament.
But the use of excess IVF embryos and the creation and use of other
embryos in research is restricted by law through national
legislation.
Human cloning for reproductive purposes is banned.
Chair of the NHMRC's licensing committee, Dr John Findlay, said
Sydney IVF's research would be closely monitored.
"They have been given a licence to do therapeutic cloning,"
Findlay said, adding the scientists are not licensed to reach the
foetal stage.
"They can go to the stage called blastocyst. They must stop at that
point," he said.
The blastocyst is a very early-stage embryo not yet implanted
into the womb.
Findlay said scientists will try and create stem cells from
patients who have abnormalities or create stem cell lines which
will be compatible with patients which have given the cells.
Initially, any stem cells extracted would be used to test new drugs
to fight diseases such as muscular dystrophy and Huntington's
disease, and later therapeutic cloning would be used to produce
body tissue matched to patients.
The director of Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research, David
van Gend, criticised the issuing of the licence, saying new
technology meant cloning was no longer necessary.
"We have regulations in Australia such that the abuses of cloning
wouldn't happen here, we will not get live birth cloning," he told
local radio.
"We won't get cloning right through to the foetal stage in order to
use them for organ transplants, but if we teach the world how to
clone you can be quite sure it will be used in less rigorous
jurisdictions."
Somatic cell nuclear transfer is a technique in which DNA from the
nucleus of an unfertilised egg is removed and replaced with the
nucleus of an adult cell such as a skin cell.
The technique can be used to create cloned embryos in order to
derive embryonic stem cells for therapeutic purposes, but can also
be used for reproductive cloning.
There are several types of stem cells. Embryonic stem cells, made
from days-old embryos, are considered the most powerful because
they can give rise to all the cell types in the body.
Sydney IVF said only eggs that were unusable for IVF because they
were immature or had not been fertilised properly, and which donors
had given consent for, would be used in the research.
The firm said it will use three different types of cells, embryonic
stem cells, cumulus cells attached to the collected eggs, and skin
cells, to produce the cloned embryos.
Sydney IVF was the first, in 2004, to extract stem cells from
Australian IVF embryos, and has since extracted and grown 10 more
colonies of embryonic stem cells this way.
