The Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, of which Hwang is a principal member, said Wednesday it produced five clones of Missy, a pet dog of Orion Group chairman John Sperling since December 2007, and four of them are healthy. Many cloned dogs have been born since Snuppy, the first cloned dog in the world, was produced by a Hwang-led research team at Seoul National University in 2005, but this is the first one to be cloned for commercial purposes from a dead pet.

Since being sacked by SNU in April 2006 for fabricating research on human embryo stem cells, Hwang has sought to return to lucrative research by setting up the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation and H Bion.

Missy’s clones Mira, Chin-Gu, and Sarang were shipped to the United States and appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday. The Sooam Biotech Research Foundation said the U.S.-based firm BioArts International commissioned a genetic test by the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, and the results verified that the three dogs were indeed clones of Missy.

The project began when Sperling donated US$3.7 million to Texas A & M University and requested cloning of his half-Collie, half-Siberian husky Missy in 1997. After Missy’s death in 2002, the team continued research with her refrigerated cells.

BioArts visited the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation last year and officially signed contract on Aug. 1 after reviewing Sooam’s research capacity. The value of the contract was not disclosed. Missy was cloned by the conventional somatic cell nuclear transfer method whereby the nucleus was removed from an unfertilized egg and replaced with the nucleus of one of Missy’s somatic cells, and this cloned fertilized egg was implanted in surrogate mother dog.

Hyun Sang-hwan, a professor at Chungbuk National University and advisor to the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation claimed the success rate of dog cloning has gone up to two-digit figures, from 0.18 percent while cloning Snuppy. However, it is expected to take some time until the research result is verified by the international scientific community, since the publication of any paper on the Missy project in international science journals has yet to be decided.

Hwang, who is abroad, told the Chosun Ilbo by phone he promised BioArts not to give media interviews.

(englishnews@chosun.com )