The journal Cell published on May 15, 2013 a study by the team of Dr. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, Oregon Health and Science University, demonstrating for the first time the cloning of human somatic cells by nuclear transfer, with a technique similar to that used by Ian Wilmut to create Dolly the sheep in 1996.
Mitalipov also succeeded in obtaining four embryonic stem cell lines from blastocysts generated by cloning somatic cells, in this case human fetal fibroblasts, which then demonstrated their pluripotency by generating various cell types. This finding had so far proved elusive for Mitalipov’s group, which in 2007 had already achieved it with somatic cells from adult macaques.
What does Dr. Mitalipov’s study consist of?
The Russian researcher, based in the U.S., insists that his work is oriented towards the progress of regenerative medicine, with the fundamental objectives of developing in vitro models of diseases, as well as achieving the differentiation of tissues from patients with degenerative diseases, which could then be transplanted to the same patient without problems of rejection. The research has no interest in the reproductive cloning of humans, but its fundamental objective is regenerative therapy. There is still a gap between the development of blastocysts by somatic cell nuclear transfer, as a source of embryonic stem cells for therapeutic cloning, and the possibility of transferring these blastocysts to a female recipient, in reproductive cloning, since the ability to generate embryonic stem cells bears no relation to the ability of these blastocysts to generate a complete individual. In fact, Mitalipov’s team, since achieving the cloning of adult macaque somatic cells in 2007, has been attempting reproductive cloning of the macaque, without success to date.
In our opinion, the breakthrough made by Mitalipov’s team is an important step forward for research in regenerative medicine, opening new doors for the development of therapies specifically designed to solve health problems that until now were not possible to address.