An Australian biotechnology company has announced the birth of the country's first cloned pig.
BresaGen said on May 9 that the pig was five weeks old and is healthy and growing normally.
The technology used to generate the pig was different from that used to make Dolly the sheep in 1996, and the company has filed a patent application for the new process, said Dr. John Smeaton, president and CEO of BresaGen.
The pig was cloned from cells that had been frozen in liquid nitrogen for more than two years, which could make the technology useful in conserving valuable and rare genetics.
BresaGen said that two important uses of the cloning technology are to improve the breeding of livestock and to create pigs whose organs can be transplanted into humans. However, pigs have a gene called the Gal gene that is absent in humans, which could lead to the pig organs being rejected by the human immune system.
"This cloning technology will provide a method whereby the function of one of the genes thought to be important in the rejection of these organs can be eliminated, or 'knocked out.'...It will be possible to produce pigs without this [Gal] gene and provide donor organs more compatible for human transplantation," said Professor Tony d'Apice of St. Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, which worked on the project in association with BresaGen.
Some of BresaGen's funding is from Nextran, a subsidiary of Baxter Healthcare.
* In related news, Infigen Inc., and Immerge BioTherapeutics Inc., have signed a three-year collaboration to use nuclear transfer technology to develop genetically modified miniature swine for the study of xenotransplantation. The technology may provide a method for the production of modified pig organs for use in humans. Infigen, a biotechnology company based in DeForest, Wisconsin, said it is the only company to have published the reproducible production of litters of cloned piglets (Nature Biotechnology 2000;18:1055-1059). Immerge BioTherapeutics is a joint venture of Novartis Pharma AG and BioTransplant Inc., of Charlestown, Massachusetts.
For Your Information:
BresaGen posts a statement at www.bresagen.com.au/files/pdf_files/PR039.pdf.
Infigen and Immerge BioTherapeutics post a joint statement at www.infigen.com/pages/update/update.html.
The abstract of the Nature Biotechnology article is available to registered users at www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nbt/journal/v18/n10/abs/nbt1000_1055.html. Subscribers can access the full text.
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