According to Jose Cibelli of Advanced Cell Technology, "work [in this area] is looking very promising." (Philip Cohen, July 11, 1998) Although the techniques do need further work, New Science has learned that many steps have been taken so that it can be quietly accomplished. Some of the earliest medical payoffs could be the production of nerve of heart muscle cells that can be used for transplantation. Ultimately, this new technology hopes to create entire organs or tissues. These organs would have little problem with immune rejection because they would be cloned from the patient's down cells. This technique would surely lessen the amount of names on the waiting lists for organ transplants through out the world. It would also lessen the need for organ donors. Another approach to growing organs and tissues is to harvest ES cells from human embryos. Along .
with the right growth factors scientists may be able to persuade human ES cells to grow into tissues and organs in vitro. In these processes, scientists would not be able to use human eggs because of the ethical ramifications and because of their short supply. Thus the move to the research around the use of cow eggs, which are more abundant and have less ethical ramifications. Joseph Jerry and his team of scientists based their research on the failure of a different technology, which was developed by a team of scientists led by Neal First of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Neal showed that adult cells taken from a wide variety of mammals could be fused with that of a cow egg, which has been striped of its nuclei. When the eggs were fused they were able to produce embryos that began to develop in vitro. The problem with this technology is that the embryos stop developing before any organs start to form. What scientists are looking for is to create a system that will not grow into a human offspring but will form the organs needed for transplants.
