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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Tokyo Joe's Cafe / Societe Anonyme/No Pennies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TokyoMex who wrote (10729)	11/13/1998 1:35:00 AM
From: Big Blue	Respond to of 119973

Yahoo, has reposted this article. This should add momentum to GERN and CTII Today. IMHO we will see a gappo double play on these in the AM. See ya then!! Friday November 13 12:25 AM ET Human Cells ''Cloned'' Using Cow Eggs By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists said Thursday they had used cloning technology to fuse human and cow cells in an attempt to grow organs for transplant in a laboratory dish. The team at tiny biotech company Advanced Cell Technology said the cells had grown as an embryo for a few days, then reverted to a primordial state known as stem cells, which are capable of growing into any kind of cell in the body. Although they used the same method they used to clone cows, the scientists at the privately held company, based in Worcester, Massachusetts, say they have no intention of trying to create a human clone. Instead, they want to try to grow organs and tissues in the lab for use in transplantation therapy. ''We will not use this technology to clone human beings,'' Michael West, president and chief executive officer of Advanced Cell Technology, vowed in a statement. The company has not submitted its research for the standard scientific ''peer review'' process, when other experts check to make sure it is legitimate work. First, they want to assess the public response, said James Robl, a professor of animal science at the University of Massachusetts who helped found the company, which has licensed and patented the technology. Otherwise, the company may end up sinking a lot of money into a project that the public will not tolerate. Reaction was fast and pronounced. ''This is the most extraordinary single development in the history of biotechnology because it now suggests that we can create new human-animal species,'' Jeremy Rifkin, a writer on biotechnology issues, said in a telephone interview. ''I don't think we should go ahead with research, around the world, until we take some time to think about it.'' Calling the idea ''dangerous and chilling,'' Rifkin said he would lobby Congress to pass a law against such experiments. But Robl thinks the potential benefits outweigh any initial distaste people might have for the idea of mixing human and animal cells. ''Embryonic stem cells hold the promise of providing an unlimited supply of cells that may be grown in the laboratory into virtually any type of tissue for transplant use,'' he said. He foresees taking a few cells from a patient and growing them perhaps into heart cells, for use in repairing a damaged heart, or brain cells for injection into the damaged brains of Parkinson's patients, or even into growing a whole organ such as a liver. Because the genetic material comes from the donor, there would be no problem of rejection. Robl's team took a human cell -- in this case a skin fibroblast cell -- and fused it using an electrical current to a cow's egg that had its nucleus removed. The human nucleus, which contains all the genes that carry the ''road map'' for building a functioning body, crossed into the hollowed-out cow egg. This process started the egg growing and dividing almost as if it had been fertilized by a sperm. Although it started out looking like an embryo, it later became a mass of stem cells. Earlier this month a team at the University of Wisconsin at Madison said they grew human stem cells from human embryos donated by infertile couples after fertility treatments. On their own the cells differentiated into cartilage, bone, muscle and other kinds of cells and are still growing in laboratory dishes. Their study, funded by Geron Corp (Nasdaq:GERN - news), is farther down the road than Robl's. But their cells would be foreign to the patient receiving them, since they contain the human genetic material from someone else. There would be the problem of rejection just as there is now with donated organs. Not so with cells cloned from the patient. Robl says his human-cow hybrid cells -- made from cells donated by Jose Cibelli, one of the scientists on the team -- died after a couple of weeks. ''If the cells get past this initial hump, then they theoretically would be like normal human embryonic stem cells and can be used just as other human embryonic stem cells can be used,'' Robl said. He said eventually the human genes would take over and only a very small amount of cow DNA would remain. He thinks this approach might be more ethically acceptable than using human embryos. Currently U.S. federal funds cannot be used to pay for such research. Earlier Stories Clone Technology Could Grow Liver In A Dish -Study (November 12)