Sam+Burgess

Our History: GenetiClone Inc was founded in 1989 by Lewis Epithelia using donations from the Veterans Association. The original goal of the company was to grow skin tissue for veterans suffering from extreme burns. Our labs hired highly trained professionals who used innovative technique which resulted in efficient growth of cloned cells and a lower rejection rate in patients receiving treatment. At the turn of the century we had just finished developing a method of growing muscle tissue for patients with extreme fourth degree burns. GenetiClone is funded by donations, and although we are for-profit our employees are not paid an exorbitant salary. This allows us to treat all veterans free of charge. In 1990 we had only one treatment center in Philadelphia, but by 2005 we had opened 5 more centers in Miami, San Francisco, Houston, Seattle, and Chicago.
 * GenetiClone Inc **.

Meet the CEO: Samantha Burgess As CEO of GenetiClone, I work to maintain our goal of providing inexpensive skin transplants to veterans while overseeing our research budgeting to ensure that no money is lost that could be spent better elsewhere. I have a Masters Degree in Business from Cornell University and a PhD in Genetic Medicine from John Hopkins University. I currently reside in Philadelphia, where the first GenetiClone Medical center opened on July 18, 1989. I live with my husband, my 18 year old son, my 14 year old daughter and our four dogs.

A History of Cell Cloning: The idea or growing tissues in a lab was introduced in the early twentieth century. Scientists were intrigued by the possibility of growing tissues outside of an organism using the cells from that same organism, and they were amazed at the biological implications of this technology. In 1998, James Thomson isolated human embryonic stem cells. This was an important discovery because it showed that stem cells could be used to repair and grow tissue. But, this discovery also has a downside. To create and isolate stem cells, one must fertilize an egg with the nucleus of a somatic cell. The fertilized egg becomes a blastocyst, which the stem cells are harvested from. For many people, this raises an ethical issue. The blastocyst has the potential to become an embryo and eventually a living person. For this reason, there has been a never ending back and forth between stem cell researchers, activist groups, and governments around the world. Many different guidelines for cell cloning and stem cell research have been released since the 1970s, and the ethical debate still rages on. This debate has prompted research on alternative sources of stem cells.

How Therapeutic (Cell) Cloning Works: Therapeutic cell cloning uses different types of stems cells and grows them in vitro so they can be used to treat disease and repair damaged tissue. Before therapeutic cloning, a female egg cell goes through a process known as Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. During SCNT, the nucleus is extracted from a female egg cell. Then, a somatic cell is taken from the patient and the nucleus is extracted. (This cell will be a healthy cell from whatever organ the patient needs treatment on. It could be from the skin, liver, or any other organ.) The nucleus from the somatic cell is then placed in the egg cell. Essentially, the nuclei are switched. The egg, tricked into thinking it has been fertilized, will then be put in a growing medium (either a woman’s uterus or an artificial medium), where it will undergo mitosis and divide just as a normal cell. This creates a mass of cells known as a blastocyst. The inner cell mass of the blastocyst contains embryonic stem cells, which are extracted and cloned (cultured) to create many embryonic stem cells. Rather than finding a surrogate mother to host the embryo, the stem cells will be extracted and put into an artificial growing medium. This medium will cause the cells to undergo mitosis and grow into a mass of tissue that can be used to restore damaged tissues in the human body. Since tissue already contains the DNA from a somatic cell, they can be inserted or placed on whatever organ the somatic cell was extracted from and replace any damaged or diseased tissue.

Therapeutic cell cloning could drastically reduce immunological rejection rates because the transplants are created from the patients own cells. Therapeutic cell cloning could also allow for entire organs to be grown in a lab using the patients own cells. This means patients can have an organ created for them, rather than be wait-listed for an organ transplant that their body may ultimately reject.

Pictures:

Tissue culture medium used for growing cells

This ear implant is being seeded with cartilage cells. The cartilage will grow around the mold, which will eventually be removed. After the mold is removed, the cultured ear can be sewn on to someone who is missing an ear, for whatever the reason may be. Though the prosthetic ear will not restore hearing, it is likely that future advancements in therapeutic cell cloning will allow for restored hearing by culturing the parts of the inner ear.

This is a piece of tissue that has been grown in vitro.

A piece of artificial skin tissue

A trachea (windpipe) that has been replicated using stem cells

This is a small leather jacket being grown in vitro. It was created as part of a series of “living art projects.” Though created as art, this tiny jacket has huge implications in biology. It demonstrates the potential of “victimless” animal projects. If we can grow leather artificially in a vegetarian friendly way, why not grow “victimless steak” or “victimless bacon?”

This ear, grown in vitro, was grown in a special machine called a rotating micro-gravity bioreactor, which allowed it to grow in a three dimensional shape. Although the ear was ¼ the size of a normal ear, it shows huge potential in the science of prosthetics. It shows we can recreate parts of the human body as separate living organisms. In the future, we could even grow muscle tissue to create functional prosthetics. This ear was grown as part of the same project as the jacket (shown above).

The ¼ size ear after it came out of the bioreactor

These CD4+ T cells were extracted from a man with stage 4 melanoma. The T cells were then cloned in a lab, which produced a huge amount of identical cells. Dr. Yee, who worked on this project, thought that the cancer fighting CD4+ T cells could last longer in the patient’s system because they produced their own food, interleukin 2, and still had the same tumor fighting effect of the CD8+ T cells already inside of the patient. The patient received a dose of 5 billion cloned CD4+ T cells, which caused his tumors to regress. The patient is now cancer free, and has been for 2 years.

Scientists researching the growing of animal muscle tissue used this sample of muscle meat form an animal to harvest cells for cloning. The scientists were researching the growing of meat in vitro. Through cell cloning, meat could be grown in a Petri dish without killing any animals. If we were able to do this, it would also take less land to raise livestock because you could grow a million steaks and only need one cow to do so. The main obstacle of growing meat in vitro is the price: it currently costs around 50,000 dollars to grow one pound of steak.

Current Uses of Cell Cloning: Since therapeutic cloning is a fairly new technology, most of the current uses are still in the research phase. There is, however, one application of cloning technology that is used often, and that is the cloning of skin cells. SCNT is used to create embryonic stem cells, that, when extracted from the blastocyst and put in a growing medium, will grow to from a thin layer of skin. This artificially grown skin resembles a wet paper towel in appearance (see image above), and although it may look flimsy it has amazing healing properties. When placed on the damaged skin of a burn victim, the skin can attach to the patient’s burn area and speed the healing process or be used as a sort of “super bandage” that will be removed once the patient’s own skin regenerates. One of the many benefits of therapeutic cloning in that the rejection rate is very low, because the tissue is created using the patients own cells (and therefore the patient’s own DNA), rather than a skin transplant from another person.

Researchers are currently working on developing other uses for therapeutic cloning. Many organ transplants are predicted to be available within the next five to ten years, such as the liver and the trachea. Scientists have also proposed a “cell printer,” which is similar to an inkjet printer, but sprays cultured skin cells instead of ink. With this technology, the patients own skin cells could be cultured and then sprayed onto the burned skin, leaving no chance for immunological rejection. This method of burn treatment would also reduce scarring caused by typical skin grafts and lower the risk of infection as well. These technologies are some of many that are being developed so they can be accessible to the public at an affordable rate, and everyone can get the high-quality treatment they deserve.

The Future of Therapeutic Cloning: The proposed expansion of GenetiClone is to account for our growing Research and Development department. In staying true to our company’s motto, we are going to experiment with different methods of therapeutic cell cloning to reduce the cost of treatment. Although treatment is free to all of our patients, more efficient methods of treatment would leave the company with extra funding that could be used for research.

With these extra funds, we are going to research the cloning of human cells other than skin. We plan to research the cloning of muscle and bone cells, which could be used to give patients with extreme burns treatment that allows them to regain full use of their injured body parts. Rather than having to live with dysfunctional limbs, therapeutic cell cloning could be used to regenerate functional muscle and bone tissue so injured veterans and amputees could regain use of their limbs.

Damaged brain cells of a stroke-inflicted rat have been replaced by brain cells grown in a lab. In the past, this technique has been unsuccessful because the stem cells just migrate to other part of the brain and grow, which did nothing to replace the missing brain tissue. Dr. Modo, who worked on this experiment with the mice, hypothesized that the stem cells needed a sort of scaffolding to grow on. The neural stem cells were attached to a tiny biodegradable polymer scaffold called PLGA, which was inserted into the brains of the mice with a very small needle. The new technique was hugely successful, and the damaged brain tissues of the mice were re-grown in just seven days. GenetiClone’s researchers plan to develop this technique to be used in humans who suffer from stroke and other forms of brain damage.

GenetiClone’s researchers would also like to begin research on therapeutic cloning of spinal cord tissues. Trough our groundbreaking research techniques, we hope to develop a method of regenerating damaged pieces of the spinal cord in paralyzed patients.

To expand on our company’s motto, our researchers are going to work to get the cost of cultured foods, such as steak, down to a reasonable price. If artificially grown meats were widely available to the public, the need for grazing areas would shrink drastically and innocent animals would be spared. After all, it only takes one cow, and you could have as many steaks as you need without having to harm the cow in any way. Also, if the amount of land cows need for grazing was reduced, our rapidly growing population will have room build houses and expand around the world.

The last planned expansion of GenetiClone deals with the controversy over stem cell research. We are going to put the utmost effort into finding an alternative for embryonic stem cells, in hopes of ending the controversy over a field of science that has the potential to save thousands of lives.

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