However, numerous teams have failed in their attempts to establish elephant iPS cells. Embryonic-like stem cells have since been made from a menagerie of threatened species, including snow leopards ( Panthera uncia) 3, Sumatran orangutans ( Pongo abelii) 4 and Japanese ptarmigans ( Lagopus muta japonica) 5. In 2011, Jeanne Loring, a stem-cell biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and her colleagues created iPS cells from a northern white rhinoceros ( Ceratotherium simum cottoni) and a monkey called a drill ( Mandrillus leucophaeus), the first such cells from endangered animals 2. “I think we’re certainly in the running for the world-record hardest iPS-cell establishment,” says Colossal co-founder George Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and a co-author of a preprint describing the work, which will soon appear on the server bioRxiv.īut the difficulty of establishing elephant iPS cells - in theory, one of the most straightforward steps in Colossal’s scheme - underscores the huge technical hurdles the team faces. They are key to Colossal’s plans to create herds of Asian elephants ( Elephus maximus) - the closest living relative of extinct woolly mammoths ( Mammuthus primigenius) - that have been genetically edited to have shaggy hair, extra fat and other mammoth traits. These induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can differentiate into any of an animal’s cell types. The breakthrough - announced today by the de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences in Dallas, Texas - is an early technical success in Colossal’s high-profile effort to engineer elephants with woolly mammoth traits.Įighteen years ago, researchers showed that mouse skin cells could be reprogrammed to act like embryonic cells 1. Scientists have finally managed to put elephant cells into an embryonic state. Credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library via Alamy Woolly mammoths’ closest living relatives are Asian elephants, which could be genetically engineered to have mammoth-like traits.