Researchers in China have announced the successful creation of animal-human chimeras which have survived till the blastocyst stage – at which point they can extract stem cells.
The study which is published in the current issue of the peer reviewed journal Cell Research notes that human skin cells were fused with rabbit ova which had their nuclei removed to produce the cloned embryos.
Hui Zhen Sheng of Shanghai Second Medical University and his team reported that more than 400 such embryos were created with more than 100 surviving till the blastocyst stage. Richard Doerflinger, of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the Washington Post that he felt certain that the human-rabbit embryos were human. “I think because all the nuclear DNA is human,” Doerflinger said, “we’d consider this an organism of the human species.”
Douglas Melton, a Harvard University cell biologist and cloning expert commented on the research saying, it is “extremely interesting, and I hope they pursue it.”
