14:37 17 January 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Andy Coghlan


A cloned human embryo has been produced for the first time from a man's skin cell, raising the prospect that such embryos could be made to provide stem cells tailored to any patient.

Only one cloned human embryo has been made before, reported by a team at Newcastle University, UK, in 2005. But it was made by cloning human embryonic stem cells that are not routinely available from patients, and so would not be practical.

The embryo newly created from a skin cell potentially gets round this problem. The ultimate aim is to make temporary embryos from which human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) could be extracted – these are the cells in embryos from which all tissues of the body originate.

Once obtained, these could be turned into tissue for treating the patient without any fear of rejection, as the cells originated from the patient.

But Stemagen, the company in La Jolla, California, US, which reported the breakthrough on Thursday, says its researchers did not manage to extract any stem cells from their cloned embryos. ...