EDINBURGH, Scotland-The creators of Dolly the sheep have announced the birth of five healthy cloned piglets in what is believed to be the first time cloned pigs have been successfully produced from adult cells.
The scientists, of PPL Therapeutics of Edinburgh, hope to be able to eventually use the technology to create transplantable organs for people. "The successful cloning…opens the door to making modified pigs whose organs and cells can be successfully transplanted into humans-the only near-term solution to solving the worldwide organ shortage crisis," PPL Therapeutics said on March 14.
The cloning was carried out by PPL's staff in Blacksburg, Virginia, under an award whose objective is the production of a knock-out pig-a pig with a specific gene that has been inactivated. Cloning is the first step toward achieving that goal.
PPL Therapeutics wants to inactivate the alpha 1-3 gal transferase gene in the pigs, which, the company explained, "is responsible for adding to pig cells a particular sugar group recognized by the human immune system as foreign and which therefore triggers an immune response leading to hyperacute rejection in humans of the transplanted organ."
The piglets-Millie, Christa, Alexis, Carrel, and Dotcom-were born in Blacksburg by cesarean section on March 5. The births were announced in a press release but have not been published in a scientific journal. The promise of xenotransplantation has sparked debate over the past few years over the ethics and potential public health effects of transplanting an animal organ into human beings. In January 1998, some scientists proposed a moratorium on xenotransplantation after reports published in 1997 in Nature and Nature Medicine suggested that pig viruses could infect human cells.
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