Most of the cloned animals through all kinds of species are abnormal. A lot of them die prematurely, or have all kinds of defects. Many cloned mice die immediately after birth because of breathing failure. |
One of the big concerns is if these stem cells express (produce) genes that can cause cancer. After implanting them into a patient, it would be cancer waiting to happen. You want to make sure that the cells you use for therapy are actually normal and are not in any way screwed up to start with. |
Stem cells hold great promise for human therapy. In an optimal world, we would make stem cells genetically matched to a patient. |
This is actually really good news. |
This is very encouraging because it says that in mice we don't find any abnormalities, so then it is very likely that the human lines are normal, too, but it is still something that has to be done formally. |
This paper shows that it's worth the effort to clone an embryo and make a stem cell line because it should be useful for therapy. |
We analyzed pretty much the entire set of genes that can be expressed and we found no significant difference between the two. |