By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
So are we headed for a better world populated by loyal and identical Lassies or destined for a messy conclusion like Jurassic Park?
The birth of five cloned puppies at a laboratory in Seoul, marking the world's first commercially cloned dogs for an individual client, invites an endless list of scientific and ethical questions that won't be answered quickly, if at all.
However, the head of the South Korean biotechnology company that pulled off the achievement, which would have been considered as mad science just years ago, appears indifferent to what he calls the ``excessive attention."
Ra Jeong-chan, the chief executive of RNL Bio, is a scientist-turned-businessman with many ambitions, which include creating a farm for cloned cancer-sniffing canines and cloning camels in Dubai.
Cloning pets for dog lovers, however, is not something his company has big plans for. RNL will of course receive applications and is already getting numerous requests from potential customers in the United States and Europe. However, it currently has no plans to clone another pet after Booger, the late companion of Bernann McKinney, the company's first individual client.
``It was an honor for us to help Bernann achieve her wish, but we never were and never will be a full-fledged dog cloning company," said Ra, although admitting that the Booger project will help raise the company's public profile as it tries to expand its business overseas.
``We are more interested in the cloning of specialized service dogs for business and government customers. We will be very picky about taking cloning orders from individual customers and we expect to announce a strict ethical framework that will limit our orders in pet cloning."
The focus on business customers is easily explained. Unlike pet owners, whose interest is limited to just one clone, clients like Seems, the Japanese biotech company that hired RNL to clone their cancer-sniffing trophy dog, prefer getting a fleet of dogs to work with.
``Right now, the SNU research team can handle about 30 cloning projects per year, but by the next year, I think we will have the ability to clone about 300 dogs per year," Ra said.
``If we are able to sell those specialized dogs at $100,000 each, that is $30 million in revenue," he said.
Lee Byeong-chun, the gene scientist behind the Booger project, was previously in a team of SNU researchers, led by disgraced gene scientist Hwang Woo-suk, who produced the world's first cloned dog, an Afghan hound named Snuppy, in 2005.
Since splitting with Hwang, Lee has built his own team of researchers who have been producing breakthrough studies on animal cloning, frequently under financial backing by RNL.
Lee's brilliance has allowed RNL to land lucrative projects, including the cloning of seven Labrador retrievers, produced from a top drug sniffing dog named Chase, after receiving an order from the Korea Customs Service.
It was also Lee's team that produced four cloned puppies of Marine, a retriever trained to recognize the scent of chemicals found in cancer cells, at the request of Seems.
However, the cloning of Booger is clearly Lee's most talked about project yet.
And Lee now finds himself in an awkward competition with ex-partner Hwang, now hired by San Francisco-based BioArts International, the world's only other company looking to make a business out of cloning dogs.
Since the Booger project was first reported by The Korea Times in February, RNL has been entangled in a dispute over patents with BioArts, with both companies claiming to have worldwide exclusive license to clone dogs.
BioArts has recently held an online auction for its dog cloning services and announced a winner in a German shepherd named Trakr, who along with his master, a retired Canadian police officer, were among the first search and rescue teams to arrive at the World Trade Center during the 9/11 incident.
The clones of Booger were created using a method called somatic cell nuclear transfer. Genetic material from the dead dog's ear was transferred to eggs with removed nuclei and then inserted into the uterus of surrogate dogs.
The Booger puppies represent a significant advancement in the technology for cloning dogs, deemed by scientists as the most difficult animals to produce genetic copies of, Ra said.
The SNU scientists needed to work for nearly three years, seven days a week, and used 1,095 eggs from 123 dogs before finally succeeding with the birth of Snuppy in 2005.
This time around, Lee's team used seven to 13 eggs on five surrogate mothers, resulting in five pregnancies in two of the dogs.
The biggest difference was made by the adjustments in cell fusion and activation, Ra said. After the DNA of the ``donor" is transferred to the egg stripped of its nucleus, scientists use electronic stimulation to fuse the somatic cell and cytoplast to produce a cloned embryo.
During the cloning of Snuppy, the range of electric jolt was controlled between 3.0 to 3.5 kilovolts per centimeter (kV/cm).
For the Booger clones, scientists pushed up the voltage from 3.8 to 5.0 kV/cm, and this achieved a fusion rate of between 50 to 75 percent, Ra said.
Lee's team has also applied for a patent for its chemical formula to improve cell activation, which also helped them pinpoint the maturation period of the ova.
Ra believes the improving efficiency in cloning techniques will allow dog cloning to become commercially viable in the next few years.
Although RNL says it provided a discount, McKinney's contract had her paying $150,000 won for one clone. Considering the trajectory of technological development, Ra says his company could lower the rate to $50,000 by 2010 and expects people to get ``really interested" when the price drops to around $20,000.
In the future, Ra says his company will attempt to clone dogs using stem cells, rather than somatic cells, which he believes could be easier and more efficient than the current procedure.
In December last year, a group of local scientists announced the successful cloning of pigs through nuclear transfer of stem cells, and a research team at Gangwon University recently claimed they had produced a cloned cow using the same technology.
``Stem cells could completely replace somatic cells in cloning procedures in the near future as the success rate is incomparable," said Ra.
As evidenced by the 500 million won price tag attached to each of the cancer-sniffing canines, RNL seems to have found itself a serious cash source.
Ra is well aware of skeptics who question the legitimacy of RNL's cloning work, claiming that the ability of service dogs has more to do with training as genes. He simply reminds us that all seven of Labrador retrievers cloned for the Korea Customs Service passed the behavior test as sniffing dogs. Only 10 to 15 percent of naturally born dogs are known to pass the test.
Ra is confident that RNL is one of the world's most technologically advanced biotech companies and is intent on proving it. Through its U.S. branch, RNL plans to launch a medial later this year to provide treatments for tendonitis, arthritis and other conditions based on stem cell therapy.
The company is already running a stem cell clinic in Beijing in collaboration with a local hospital, specializing in treatment for spinal cord injuries.
Ra also has ambitious plans for Dubai, where he plans to establish a local branch to clone camels and horses using stem cells, which he believes will garner significant demand.
However, RNL's patent dispute with BioArts is clearly not the kind of international exposure it wanted. With RNL invoking the patent rights related to Snuppy and BioArts invoking the patent rights related to Dolly the sheep, the situation is somewhat ironic, with the U.S. company forced to play down the significance of Hwang's achievement at SNU.
In an interview with The Korea Times, Lou Hawthorne, chief executive of BioArts, said that the assertion of RNL claiming exclusive rights over dog cloning would be a case of ``the tail wagging the dog.''
``The claims in the Roslin patents relate to a method of cloning all mammals, not just sheep. Although the technique was first successful with sheep, the claims are not limited to sheep,'' he said.
Ra admitted that his company received a cease and desist letter from BioArts, but said he didn't feel the need to write back. He also said the company is preparing to sue Hwang's research team at Sooam for patent infringement.
``We are not a pet cloning company anyway, so we don't mind BioArts commitment to that end," said Ra.
``But we want to make it clear that since we own the exclusive rights, everything has to go to us. BioArts should rather be one of our clients," he said.