Scientist defends therapeutic cloning

1.00pm

LONDON - The head of the scientific team that has applied for Europe's first licence to create human embryos for stem cell research said they are not trying clone babies but to help millions of people with diabetes.

"My biggest worry is that people will not understand what we are trying to do," said Dr Miodrag Stojkovic, of the University of Newcastle in northern England.

"My intention is to remove these fears -- we don't want to clone human beings," he told Reuters in an interview.

"Our aim is to try to understand type 1 diabetes and to try to help the millions of people who suffer from this disease," he added.

Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the country's cloning watchdog group, was considering the university's application for human therapeutic cloning, creating embryos as a source of stem cells to cure diseases.

Stem cells are master cells of the body that can develop into other cell types.

A decision is not expected for a week or longer but it has re-ignited the ethical debate on human therapeutic cloning and caused uproar among opponents who fear it will could lead to reproductive cloning, which is outlawed in Britain.

"We don't want to do reproductive cloning. We want to use cloned embryos to derive stem cells which have no possibility of developing into a baby," Stojkovic said.

Stojkovic, a stem cell expert from Serbia who has also worked in Germany, came to Britain 18 months ago. Britain has the European Union's most lenient stance on stem cells and cloning.

He and his team hope to create human embryos by taking skin cells from patients with type 1 diabetes, extracting genetic material from them and placing it in eggs whose nucleus has been removed.

The eggs will be stimulated to develop into an embryo which will be allowed to grow to a very early stage, about six to eight days, and then the stem cells will be removed.

"There is no theoretical chance that these embryos could develop into babies," said Stojkovic.

The stem cells will be grown in the laboratory and then the researchers will try to coax them into developing into pancreatic cells.

"It means you will have pancreatic cells which match the genetic background of the patient. There will be no problem of immunological rejection," he said.

"A very important aim is to have a human stem cell line and to learn something more about type 1 diabetes and to know more about the molecular and biochemical mechanisms of the disease and how it responds to drugs."

In sufferers of type one diabetes the pancreas fails to produce the insulin which is essential for survival. It usually develops in children and adolescents.

Stojkovic said stem cell research is still in its infancy. The first stem cell line was derived six years ago and it could be up to 10 years before the research could benefit patients, he added.

"I don't see any scientific obstacle why we should not progress," he said.

- REUTERS