UK grants two licenses for human-animal embryo work

LONDON (Reuters) - British regulators granted two licenses on Thursday to conduct controversial experiments using hybrid human-animal embryos, paving the way for further stem cell research into diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority decision comes after the government had at one point proposed a ban on creating the hybrid embryos due to perceived public unease but relented after pressure from the scientific community.

The agency granted the one-year licenses to scientists at King's College London and the University of Newcastle.

"This is very good news and an important step forward," said Christopher Shaw, a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College. "I think the outcome reflects improved communication between scientists and the public, and shows that the HFEA and the government have listened to that dialogue."

The researchers will be allowed to create a specific kind of inter-species hybrid, created by injecting human DNA into a hollowed-out animal egg cell. The resulting "cytoplasmic hybrid" embryo, or "cybrid" would be 99.9 percent human and 0.1 percent animal.

Britain is one of the leading states for stem cell research, attracting scientists from around the world with a permissive environment that allows embryo studies within strict guidelines, but the one-time proposed ban was seen as putting that at risk.

Scientists in China, the United States and Canada have carried out similar work, the same technique used to create Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal. They have done the work using animal-only cells and have also already combined human cells with animal eggs experimentally.

To try to make human embryos researchers currently rely on human eggs left over from fertility treatments, but these are in short supply. Opponents of the work say mixing even a tiny amount of human genetic material with an animal's is unnatural and wrong.

The researchers hope to use the hybrid embryos, which must be destroyed after 14 days, to create stem cells that might provide new medical treatments for a range degenerative diseases.

The HFEA regulators in May deferred a decision on other types of human-animal embryos, such as "true hybrids", created by the fusion of a human sperm and an animal egg, and "human chimeras", where human cells are injected into animal embryos.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Maggie Fox)