Saint-Hyacinthe, December 7, 2001 - Over the past ten days, three identical, strong calves were born in perfect health at the Université de Montréal Faculté de médecine vétérinaire. The clones were produced by Professor Lawrence Smith, who is well-known for cloning the famous bull Starbuck. The researcher and his team of the Centre de recherche en reproduction animale developed a new cloning technique that is almost four times more effective than the one used to produce Starbuck II. It took 64 attempts before the famous breeding bull was cloned. The new technique developed by Dr. Smith raises the cloning success rate up 1 in 64 to 1 in 17. Even though they all came from the same cells, two of the calves were cloned with the new technique, while the last was produced with the technique used for Starbuck II, but slightly improved. A patent application has been filed for the new cloning technique.

«The new technique has two key aspects, explains Dr. Smith. Host oocytes are enucleated and used at the telophase stage (i.e., after oocyte activation) instead of oocytes arrested at metaphase stage of meiosis, the usual procedure. The donor cells are then induced to re-initiate cell division before nuclear transfer, which differs from previous methods that require the use of cells arrested at early stages of the cell division cycle.»

Dr. Lawrence Smith has been a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and researcher at the Animal Reproduction Research Centre (CRRA) at Université de Montréal since 1989. Prior to that, he was a member of the research group at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, led by Ian Wilmut, the same group that produced the famous sheep Dolly. Dr. Smith developed the original nuclear transfer technique used at the Roslin Institute.

Since the spring of this year, Dr. Smith has held a prestigious Canada Research Chair in Animal Cloning and Biotechnology. This «Senior» Chair provides him with $200,000 in funding a year to carry out basic research designed to improve animal reproduction techniques.

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For information:
Lise Bombardier
Faculté de médecine vétérinaire
Université de Montréal
(514) 343-6111 extension 8277 or (450) 773-8521, extension 8277