The name of the company is Sooam Biotech. It is, they say, the company with the most advanced dog cloning technology in the world, but that same system that is now proving its effectiveness in dogs could soon spread to other animal species.
The cloning of dogs is for now a limited market niche, but this company is achieving absolute prominence in this field with a system that, yes, has a high price. Cloning your pet will cost you $100,000, but also the outcome could easily be applied to combat the disappearance of endangered species or to accelerate progress in different medical fields.
Sooam proclaims that they are able to clone any type of dog regardless of pedigree, size or age, and claim that one in three cloned embryos end up resulting in a healthy pet. With more than 600 cloned dogs, the company has been exploring another unique field for some time: the cloning of dogs with special genetics that makes them endowed to specific tasks.
Junichi Fukuda has been one of Sooam’s first clients and has cloned Momoko, a very special dog in his life. The result is Momo, who “acts in the same way as Momoko, but I understand that she is a different dog”.
Thus, in 2009 they cloned Trakr, a German shepherd who helped in the search and rescue from the 9/11 attack and who managed to find the last survivor of a landslide. The same has happened recently with nine puppy clones from a dog in the SWAT team from Seoul in South Korea, who will fight crime after the quarantine period that all the cloned dogs must undergo.
The cloning process is based on the so-called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT), a cell that oddly enough is not in a reproductive cell such as sperm or an ovule, but rather on a skin cell that is extracted after a biopsy. With the help of two other dogs (one donates the ovule, another one acts as a mother for the puppies), the gestation process is completed as well as the care during the first few weeks of life.
Responsible for this mastermind venture is the controversial scientist Dr. Woosuk Hwang who in the late 90’s and early 2000’s inhabited the front pages of the scientific media by developing advanced cloning techniques that seemed to pave the way for medical research in humans: Some pointed out that this type of technology developed cures for various diseases, but in 2005 it was discovered that the evidence of the investigations had been manipulated.
National University of Seoul Research Center
Hwang resigned from his post at the National University of Seoul, but would return to his research in 2006 when he founded Sooam. Although in 2009 he was sentenced to a two-year suspension for “fabricating data, misusing research funds, and trading illegally in human eggs,” however, he never went to prison.
Many scientists criticize his work and methods, but despite all this, his research work has continued and has allowed Sooam to become the absolute leader in this field. These experiments are now used to help avoid the extinction of certain species – they seem to have succeeded with the coyote – and to explore other similar subject fields.
For example, they propose the creation of genetically modified cows with these methods so that the milk they produce is rich in erythropoietin, a hormone that would help treat anemia and other blood diseases.
He has also created a disease model and “xenotransplantation” for pigs which would allow pigs to develop organs that would then be used as transplants in humans. This, the experts say, is one of the holy grails of medicine: if, for example, pigs were to develop hearts that were not rejected by human beings, we would have access to “organ factories” for that kind of medical needs.
The SCNT technique used for coyotes can theoretically clone extinct species such as the mammoth, which disappeared more than 3,600 years ago. At Sooam they are still looking for the right sample – they make expeditions to Siberia every summer and are trying to be successful in this process but for the moment they have not succeeded.
And of course, cloning human beings has been considered, something that of course generates as much expectation as doubts and criticism. The possibilities seem limitless for a field of science that makes the ethical debate inevitable and that will have to be trailed very closely in the coming months and years.
Provenance: TechInsider
