THE scientist who created Dolly the sheep will attempt to clone human embryos this summer after securing a licence to use the technique to find a cure for motor neurone disease.

Ian Wilmut, of the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, was awarded Britain’s second licence to conduct therapeutic cloning yesterday by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, clearing the way for experiments to begin within months.

His team, which includes researchers from King’s College London, will use the procedure to study motor neurone disease (MND), the devasting condition that has afflicted David Niven, the actor, and Don Revie, the former England football manager.

By cloning cells from patients with the wasting disease, Professor Wilmut aims to create an unprecedented model for investigating the disorder’s causes and development. This will transform the prospects for developing an effective therapy, allowing scientists to test promising drugs on human cells in the laboratory rather than on animals or people.

At present there is no cure for MND, in which the nerve cells that control the muscles degenerate and die. About 5,000 patients in Britain are affected by the disease, most of whom die within two to five years of diagnosis.

While human cloning for medical research has been legal in Britain since 2001, the Roslin-King’s team is only the second to be granted the required licence. Scientists at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne became the first to win approval last August.

Professor Wilmut said that the work would not involve reproductive cloning. “Our aim will be to generate stem cells purely for research purposes,” he said yesterday. “The eggs we use will not be allowed to grow beyond 14 days. Once the stem cells are removed for cell culture, the remaining cells will be destroyed.”

The goal of therapeutic cloning is to generate human embryonic stem (ES) cells that are genetically identical to patients’ and can be used to grow either replacement tissues for transplant or model cells for investigating certain diseases. While the Newcastle group aims ultimately to use cloned ES cells to treat diseases such as diabetes, Professor Wilmut plans to employ them purely as laboratory tools.

He aims to produce cloned ES cells using the DNA of adults with a genetic form of MND and coax these to develop into motor neurons — the long nerve cells that transmit messages from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles.

“We will compare the behaviour and chemical profile of neurons with the gene defect to those without,” Christopher Shaw, of King’s, another member of the team, said. “This will tell us about the earliest events that ultimately lead to cell death.”

Groups who oppose all cloning and embryo research attacked the ruling, saying that it was far from certain that adult stem cells could not be used in the research. A representative of Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: “Human cloning remains dangerous, undesirable and unnecessary.”

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