A team of Korean researchers has come close to creating interspecies stem cells by combining monkey cells with cow ova. The resulting blastocyst--a source of stem cells--did not thrive. But researchers say they feel confident that their approach will deliver batches of fresh cells. Culturing new stem cell lines from animal ova would advance research testing new therapies as well as offer an approach that could conceivably avert having to use cloned human embryonic stem cells in therapeutic research. It may also substitute one controversy in exchange for another, as the scientific community confronts a reaction against the development of animal chimeras.
- read the Korea Times report