Therapeutic Cloning Explained Higher

🎓 Therapeutic Cloning Explained Higher

Therapeutic cloning is a technique that could solve one of the biggest problems in stem cell medicine: immune rejection. Here is how it works:

1. A body cell is taken from the patient (e.g., a skin cell). The nucleus is removed from this cell — it contains the patient's complete DNA.
2. An egg cell is taken from a donor female. The nucleus is removed from the egg cell (it is "enucleated"), leaving just the egg cell's cytoplasm.
3. The patient's nucleus is inserted into the enucleated egg cell. The egg cell is then stimulated to divide, forming an embryo.
4. After a few days, embryonic stem cells are harvested from this embryo. Because the embryo's nucleus came from the patient, these stem cells are genetically identical to the patient.
5. These stem cells can be directed to differentiate into whatever cell type the patient needs (e.g., insulin-producing cells for a diabetic patient) and transplanted back without risk of immune rejection.

Key advantage: Because the replacement cells are genetically matched to the patient, the immune system recognises them as "self" and does not attack them.

Key ethical issue: An embryo is created and then destroyed to harvest its stem cells. This raises the same ethical objections as other embryonic stem cell research.

Note: Therapeutic cloning is distinct from reproductive cloning (which aims to create a whole new organism). Therapeutic cloning aims only to produce stem cells for treatment.