Debate Flares Over Pig Cloning

By Ed Cropley

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - The debate about the safety of using cloned pig organs for human transplants intensified on Monday, after Scottish researchers who created Dolly the sheep said they were considering ending research in that area.

The Roslin Institute in Edinburgh said on Monday that U.S.-based Geron Bio-Med Ltd, which finances Roslin's research, had reduced its funding for trying to produce genetically altered pig organs for human use.

A report in Scotland on Sunday newspaper said Geron cut off funding because of concerns over the possible health risk of animal-to-human transplants, especially the transmission of potentially deadly animal viruses to humans.

But Roslin said on Monday the funding was simply redirected into other genetic research for economic reasons and not because of potential health dangers from so-called xenotransplantation.

"I want to stress we haven't uncovered anything new or dangerous or anything like that about xenotransplantation, so any decision we make will be entirely a practical one about where to concentrate our research efforts," Professor Grahame Bulfield, director of the Roslin Institute, told the BBC.

Scientists have worked on the cloned pig project for two years to try to make human recipients less likely to reject pig organs after a transplant operation. Researchers try to alter pig genes and then clone the modified pigs as a source of organs.

Some pig parts like valves are currently used in areas like heart transplants.

News Hurts Leader In Field

The news hurt shares in Scottish biotech company PPL Therapeutics Plc, which worked with Roslin to clone Dolly and said in March it had repeated the feat with five pigs. Its stock, which jumped in March on news of the pig cloning, ended the day down 8.5 percent at 151 pence.

PPL, a leader in the field of xenotransplantation, said it had a separate pig programme from Roslin and would not be affected by any change in Roslin's funding.

"There is more work to be done to allay all fears regarding the transplantation of animal organs into humans," Ron James, managing director of PPL, said in a statement.

But he said PPL was an "extremely responsible" organisation, which would not carry out human clinical trials until it was considered safe. He added the company would not be in a position to start trials for another four years -- enough time to determine if the procedure is risky or not.

The company said earlier investors should not be concerned because its transplant work was not related to that being carried out at the Roslin.

Eva Haas of stockbroker Old Mutual Securities said investors may have over-reacted to the setback in an early stage project.

"It's fairly early stage stuff they have been working on with pigs and it is not really what most analysts have been valuing the company on," she said.

The main thrust of PPL's work is the development of drugs produced in the milk of genetically modified animals, rather than breeding animals for organ transplants. In one case, the milk of a cloned sheep can be used a cheaper way of producing a drug to fight cystic fibrosis.

Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler and David Luhnow.

Copyright © 2000 Reuters Limited.

Copyright © 2000 At Home Corporation.

This article posted August 19, 2000.