Stem Cell Breakthrough Reported: ; Unfertilized Eggs Can Likely Be Used to Make Transplant Tissue fo

Jun 30, 12:35 AM

Current Headlines: By MALCOLM RITTER

NEW YORK - Scientists say they've created embryonic stem cells by stimulating unfertilized eggs, a significant step toward producing transplant tissue that's genetically matched to women.

The advance suggests that someday, a woman who wants a transplant to treat a condition like diabetes or a spinal cord injury could provide eggs to a lab, which in turn could create tissue that her body wouldn't reject.

Ethicists disagreed on whether the strategy would avoid the long- standing ethical objections to creating embryonic stem cells by other means.

Such cells can develop into virtually any tissue of the body, and scientists hope to harness them for producing specialized tissues like nerve cells or pancreas cells to treat a range of illnesses. But the process of harvesting the stem cells destroys embryos, which many people oppose.

To create tissues that genetically match a patient, some scientists are trying to develop a process called therapeutic cloning, in which DNA from the patient is inserted into an unfertilized egg, an embryo is produced and stem cells are harvested. But nobody has made that work in humans.

The new work tries another tack: stimulating a woman's unfertilized egg to begin embryonic development. Scientists believe this development can't continue long enough to produce a baby, but as the new work shows, it can produce stem cells that are genetically matched to the egg donor.

Such an approach could not provide matched cells for men, of course.

The work, published online by the journal Cloning and Stem Cells, is reported by scientists from Lifeline Cell Technology of Walkersville, Md., and from Moscow.

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