It’s been done with sheep, frogs, mice and even infant human cells, but no one had had success in cloning cells from adults, a much more challenging feat since decades of development have to be erased and reprogrammed. Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at biotech firm Advanced Cell Technology, working with a group of researchers at CHA University in South Korea, changed all that.
His team inserted DNA from a donor cell into an egg stripped of its own genetic code, but the goal isn’t to create mini-mes. Instead, the method could mean a new way to make stem cells, which could then be turned into new nerve, muscle or insulin-producing cells to treat or even cure diseases like Alzheimer’s and diabetes.
The breakthrough is sweet for Lanza, who spent years defending work on stem cells extracted from excess IVF embryos at a time when lawmakers and the White House banned federal funding for some studies. The controversies may continue, but thanks to Lanza the science will too.
Park covers health and medicine for TIME and is the author of The Stem Cell Hope
- How to Help Victims of the Texas School Shooting
- TIME's 100 Most Influential People of 2022
- What the Buffalo Tragedy Has to Do With the Effort to Overturn Roe
- Column: The U.S. Failed Miserably on COVID-19. Canada Shows It Didn't Have to Be That Way
- N.Y. Will Soon Require Businesses to Post Salaries in Job Listings. Here's What Happened When Colorado Did It
- The 46 Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2022
- ‘We Are in a Moment of Reckoning.’ Amanda Nguyen on Taking the Fight for Sexual Violence Survivors to the U.N.
