Making cells to cure blood disease @ IHT

Very good article by Gareth Cook at the International Herald Tribune talking about Children's Hospital Boston plans to clone human cells.

Consider the case of a boy with sickle cell anemia, a potentially lethal disease in which a genetic defect causes red blood cells to form improperly. The scientists envision taking a skin cell from the boy and removing the nucleus that contains his DNA. They would then place this DNA into an egg cell, likely one donated by his mother, and then prompt this egg cell to begin dividing. This would be grown for several days, becoming an embryo whose DNA matches the boy's. From this, scientists could then extract embryonic stem cells, which can become any cell - including blood - in the body. With this done, the scientists would correct the stem cells' DNA, using a proven laboratory procedure to change the portion that causes sickle cell anemia. Then, in a much more difficult step, they would coax the embryonic stem cells to become blood stem cells, providing an almost perfectly matched bone marrow transplant.

Read the article via IHT here.