California-based company has successfully utilised adult human cells to produce cloned human embryos, which may be described as the first step towards using cloning techniques for biomedical research and therapy.
Even though human blastocysts have been reported earlier also, Stemagen is the first company to produce them with male fibroblasts.The company now needs to use such blastocysts to establish self-propagating lines of embryonic stem cells that would be genetically identical to a patient.
In 2004 and 2005, Korean researcher Woo Suk Hwang claimed that he had created cloned human blastocysts, and stem-cell lines from them. However, his results turned out to be fraudulent.
Source-ANI
JDP/S
