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Pittsburgh Business Times LATEST NEWS 10:24 AM EDT Friday - August 29, 2003 NIH renews $6M grant to study monkey cloning The National Institutes of Health has renewed a grant worth more than $6 million for the Pittsburgh Development Center to study barriers to cloning monkeys. Researchers at the Pittsburgh Development Center, which is affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh and the Magee- Womens Research Institute, say cloning primates is vital to generate better research models for human diseases so that studies obtain more accurate results using fewer animals. Also, the researchers say, cloning monkeys might lead to a better understanding of the molecular biology of embryonic stem cells, which could be used to treat disorders including diabetes and Parkinson's disease, as well as to repair damaged organs. The five-year, $6.4 million grant from the NIH renews funding originally awarded in 1998 to Gerald Schatten, the project's principal investigator and director of the Pittsburgh Development Center, as well as a professor at Pitt's School of Medicine. "Valuable discoveries have been made, and continue to be made, using mice, rats and other genetically modified rodent species as models for human disease," Mr. Schatten said, "yet many serious disorders often cannot be appropriately studied in these lower animals." Because monkeys provide a model that is closer to humans, the use of cloned primates could accelerate the safe and effective discovery and implementation of new treatments, including stem call and gene therapies, as well as the understanding of the molecular basis of normal human development, he said. But fundamental obstacles remain to successfully cloning monkeys, the researchers say. Calvin Simerly, a co- investigator, said researchers at the Pittsburgh Development Center have designed "several strategies" to get around those barriers. They aim to generate at least 10 cloned monkeys and to produce at least eight sets of identical offspring, according to Pitt. SOURCE: Pittsburgh Business Times - August 29, 2003 http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2003/08/25/daily49.html * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn