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Since the birth of the first cloned sheep Dolly in 2003, countless scientific research teams have been licking the bricks and tiles for this subject, and today, 20 years later, using relatively mature cloning technology, it can not only "reproduce" common livestock such as cats, dogs, pigs, etc., but even realize the cloning of human organs, tissues or certain cells.
In the past 20 years, cloning technology has also moved from the laboratory to the commercial use.
At present, South Korea's Xiuyan Institute of Life Engineering and the United States' ViaGen Pets are among the few companies in the world that can provide animal cloning services, and in China, Sino Valley Biological Company has bred the first commercial cloned cat "garlic" in China.
Clone cat "Garlic"
According to titanium media, in the birth process of "garlic", technicians have prepared nearly 40 cloned embryos, which are implanted into 4 surrogate mother cats, of which 1 Chinese pastoral cat naturally gave birth after 66 days of pregnancy.
From the past history, the cloning success rate of "garlic" has increased a lot. In 2002, when scientists first experimented with cloning cats, 82 embryos were made, but only one cat successfully became pregnant, and this fetus only gave birth to a kitten; in 2005, scientists bred more than 1,000 embryos and implanted them in 123 surrogate mothers, and finally only "Snoopy" survived tenaciously.
From the current market price, the price of Sino Valley Company to clone a pet cat is 250,000 yuan, and the price of a pet dog is 380,000 yuan, which is a high price and a high success rate, which also allows it to smoothly open the commercialization of cloned pets.
<h2>Pets are "forked", too niche</h2>
In addition to the commercialization progress in Sino Valley, domestic capital has also begun to focus on this "replica" business.
Recently, Ximan Gene received millions of yuan of angel investment, and the investors are Wudun Security and Fun Pin Technology. According to public information, Seaman Gene is a newly emerging biotechnology company, and it is currently engaged in the pet cloning business, realizing a closed loop from animal genes, gene editing, cell therapy to animal cloning life cycle management.
"The essence of animal cloning is actually to extract somatic cells from animals, obtain all the DNA genetic information, implant unfertilized eggs through cell nuclear transfer technology, and then implant the surviving embryos into the surrogate mother, and finally be born." Zheng Shidong, CEO of Heeman Gene, told Titanium Media.
According to Zheng Shidong, with the company's current technical means, 10 embryos can have one survival, the survival rate is about 10%, and as long as the donor is healthy, the survival rate of cloned animals can reach more than 90%.
According to titanium media, biotechnology companies such as Sino Valley and Seaman Gene can also do some innovative business in gene editing technology, such as pet dogs have family genetic diseases, and in the process of pet cloning, they can "knock out" the genes with diseases, so that the individuals born out are more perfect, including life span can be extended.
Although the price of pet cloning is not cheap, the corresponding cost is also high, mainly because the entire operation process is more complex and involves more precise operation. "From the extraction of somatic cells to embryo transfer, each one requires at least three or four doctoral-level technicians to complete, and the pregnant mother also needs to be cared for, and the 'baby' born also needs to do a series of health examinations, parenting and other work, in general, labor costs, time costs, consumables costs are very large." Zheng Shidong told Titanium Media.
Even so, in the eyes of practitioners, this is still a promising business. Zheng Shidong said that the foreign pet cloning market is not as good as domestic in terms of labor costs, market maturity, and user scale, coupled with the fact that developed countries are more demanding on animal protection and do not allow animal surrogacy, etc., so in fact, there are few global competitors in this industry. "Each country can find a general agent to take orders, produce them domestically, and sell them overseas in the form of finished products for export."
Titanium Media learned that ViaGen pet cloning company, which carries out this business in the United States, once suspended the business due to strong protests from animal protectors, and later restarted the business under the temptation of a huge market, and the commercialization of pet cloning in Europe has been difficult to promote.
The reason for the difficulty of advancing is mainly due to the ethical controversy. First, a healthy cat or dog often needs a dozen embryos to breed successfully; second, the surrogate mother may receive hormone therapy, which can lead to disease or give birth to a "freak." What worries animal protection activists even more is that the animals used for cloning experiments have long lived in a firmly restricted living environment and have to endure the pain of repeated surgeries.
"After the pet cloning company undertakes the order, it will generally select several 'surrogate mothers' for surrogacy, and the clones that are born will be selected by the customer and then handed over, as for the other animals that are born, they do not know where to go." In this regard, the pet cloning business does have some gray character. A pet owner told Titanium Media.
So, is commercial pet cloning risky at the legal level?
Beijing lawyer Mr. Wu told Titanium Media that cloning is a sensitive topic all over the world, and at present, it is basically a scientific research institute for technology research and development, etc., while commercial cloning needs to be approved by the relevant state departments, and it can only be practiced with qualifications.
A business observer said that there is currently no relevant industry standard for animal commercial cloning in China, and once the standard is formed, not only will the threshold for employment become higher, but also some legal risks will be faced.
"Seaman Gene has obtained a wildlife breeding license for Class I and Class II protected animals, which can be used as a cloning market, and there is no relevant legal risk in animal surrogacy." Zheng Shidong said.
According to Titanium Media, the main business of domestic pet cloning companies is cat and dog cloning, while some uncommon pet cloning is still in the exploratory stage.
Zheng Shidong told Titanium Media: "Previously, we had some American customers, wanted to clone golden pythons, turtles and other pets, generally 500 minimum orders, this kind of business is more troublesome, first of all, this kind of surrogacy of the mother is difficult to find, but also lack of corresponding veterinarians to do artificial insemination and other work, in addition to how animals are born on a large scale breeding is also a big problem, from the cost estimate, want to do this business, the upfront investment is at least millions of millions." ”
According to the data provided by Heeman Gene, the current annual order volume of pet cloning is only about 130 cases, which is still a very niche business, and there may be a larger market space in the B-end market.
<h2>The B-side market is more imaginative</h2>
From the perspective of the B-end market, the use of cloning technology to achieve large-scale breeding and breeding of livestock (beef cattle, pigs, etc.), tool dogs (such as guide dogs, police dogs, etc.) and competitive animals (horse racing, bullfighting, etc.) is undoubtedly full of imagination.
Taking police dogs as an example, most of the domestic police dogs are introduced from abroad, from purchase to breeding to training, each police dog needs to spend three or four years, costing hundreds of thousands of yuan to cultivate an excellent police dog, and the use of cloning technology can not only "inherit" excellent police dog individuals, but also shorten the training cycle and put police dogs into the post faster.
On a commercial level, cloning police dogs is also more cost-effective. In South Korea, where the cloning market is relatively mature, the cost of cloning a police dog is about 100,000 US dollars, and according to the traditional way, only about three of the 10 dogs trained can have the funds to become police dogs, and the training cost of each dog alone is as high as 40,000 US dollars.
In China, the technical barriers of police dog cloning have been broken, in 2018, led by the Kunming Police Dog Base of the Ministry of Public Security, Yunnan Agricultural University and Sino Valley Biological Company cooperated to cultivate the first cloned police dog "Kunxun" using somatic cell cloning technology.
After 9 months of training, on August 22, 2019, "KunXun" successfully passed the examination and officially entered the police, compared with the past training a qualified police dog it took three or four years, cloning technology greatly improved the breeding efficiency of excellent police dogs.
The first cloned police dog in China "Kun Xun"
Wan Jiusheng, a researcher at the project team of Kunming Police Dog Base, said that it is planned to establish a "National Meritorious Police Dog Somatic Cell Bank" that can be preserved for 50 years, and it is expected to achieve batch cloning of Meritorious Kunming Dogs in the next 10 years.
At the same time, with the hot pet economy, some racing dogs are more and more favored by people with their excellent pedigree, health and excellent genes. At present, many kennels in China have bred high-end purebred dogs by introducing breeding dogs of excellent pedigree, but the introduction price is often expensive, generally ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions.
"Like the kennel wants to breed a valuable dog, not only from abroad to introduce breeding dogs on the line, but also need to go through breeding, breeding, to the third generation, the fourth generation is possible to give birth to pure blood dogs, so the cost is very high, and the use of pet cloning technology, only need to save the introduced breeding dog cells, you can breed dogs of the same bloodline in batches, the cost will naturally come down." Zheng Shidong told Titanium Media.
In addition to the above business, there is also a considerable market demand for rare and protected animals such as pandas, antelopes, polar bears, golden snub-nosed monkeys and so on.
"At present, like some zoos are also negotiating with us, due to the risk of infectious diseases, the antelopes in their park can not be imported for a long time, if the cloning is successfully realized, we can supply to the national market, according to the purchase order of 500,000 per, tens of thousands of demand to calculate, the market size is immeasurable." He said.
As for the aquaculture industry, Zheng Shidong is more cautious. He said that the use of existing cloning technology has been able to increase the lean meat content of pork by more than 40%, including large-scale breeding like Japanese wagyu beef, but consumers are still difficult to accept eating cloned meat, "in the final analysis, it is still a matter of consumer cognition." ”
According to Titanium Media, in addition to cloning services, the technical focus of Seaman Gene in 2021 is on the research and development of STING agonists.
As the "future star" of tumor immunotherapy, agonists can specifically and powerfully bind to STING proteins, while activating the STING signaling pathway, thus playing a miraculous anti-cancer effect. "Our team has been studying this for almost six years, and this year we may apply for the corresponding product approval." Zheng Shidong told Titanium Media.
For companies such as Seaman Gene, pet cloning may only be a "stepping stone", through somatic cell cloning technology, gene editing technology, can better understand the pathogenic mechanism of cats and dogs and gene therapy, the future may gradually expand to the level of human disease treatment. From this point of view, the "biotechnology" brand of Heeman gene seems to be heavier, and what new biological research results it will bring in the future deserves the industry's follow-up and attention. (This article was first published on the Titanium Media App, and the author is |.) Liu Muzong)