By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

RNL Bio, a Seoul-based biotech firm, plans to open a research center for canine cloning early next year.

By 2013, it will have the ability to produce 1,000 cloned dogs per year, company executives said.

RNL Bio is one of the world's few companies that are attempting to turn dog cloning into a business. Another is San Francisco-based Bio Arts, which is engaged in a patent dispute with RNL Bio over commercial cloning activities.

"Dog cloning is a skill perfected by Korea. Our research center will provide the first step in commercialization," said Ra Jeong-chan, the chief executive of RNL Bio.

The company said it had purchased 16,500 square meters of land in Gyeonggi Province to build the center, which will focus on cloning pets, working dogs and also endangered species, including wolves.

It has particularly high hopes for working dogs, such as bomb and drug sniffing retrievers and also a new breed of dogs known for their talent at detecting cancer cells.

RNL Bio also said it will provide a total service for dog cloning, which includes a stem cell bank and treatment.

By the time the company achieves the ability to produce 1,000 dogs per year, it will earn around 100 billion won annually, with the price of a cloned dog dropping from the current $100,000 to $30,000, the executives said.

RNL Bio have already provided a group of cloned drug-sniffing retrievers to the Korea Customs Service, and also successfully cloned puppies of "Marine," a retriever trained to recognize the scent of chemicals found in cancer cells. The puppies are currently being trained in Japan, the company said.

Dogs are considered one of the more difficult mammals to clone because of their reproductive cycle that includes difficult-to-predict ovulation.

Bio Arts had been repeatedly criticizing RNL Bio of "destroying" the dog cloning market by aggressively lowering prices, and is skeptical whether pet cloning will ever become a viable business.

It's also questionable whether companies or government organizations will be willing to pay the premium for genetic copies of working dogs. Researchers argue that training has more to do with the ability of such special-purpose animals than genes.

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr