Another biotech bubble bursts - this firm once anticipated it would be part of a multi-billion-dollar industry.
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Cat Cloning Company Closes
Hiss: Bad news for multiple cat-owning shut ins.
Red Herring, October 12 2006
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=19153&hed=Cat+Cloning+Company+Closes

Those hoping to resurrect dearly-departed Fluffy may have to look further to clone their pets.

Genetic Savings and Clone, a Sausalito-based biotechnology company that clones cats confirmed in a voice message left for callers Thursday that it is no longer accepting orders. The message also said the company would not grant interviews to the news media.

The company sent letters to its clients last month informing them that it would shut down by the end of the year, writing that it was "unable to develop the technology to the point that cloning pets is commercially viable," according to a report from the Associated Press.

The company had recently lowered its price for cloning a cat to $32,000 from $50,000.

GSC produced its first clones of Tahini, a spotted Bengal cat belonging to the son of company CEO Lou Hawthorne, which resulted in two genetically identical kittens named Baba Ganoush and Tabouli. Soon after, the company gained notoriety by creating the first cloned cat for a paying client. A woman in Texas paid $50,000 to create a clone of her dead cat, Nicky.

GSC has cloned five cats since its launch in 2004, according to the firm's Web site, but only two for paying customers. The company’s claim to fame is that it uses chromatin transfer technology, a process the company claims is more efficient than the technique used to clone Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from a cell of an adult animal.

That Dog Don't Hunt

So far, the company has not been able to clone a dog using chromatin transfer technology.

Critics of animal cloning say that the process creates health problems for cloned animals involved. "For every successful 'clone,' dozens fail and die prematurely, have physical abnormalities, and face chronic pain and suffering," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States.

"It's no surprise the demand for cloned pets is basically non-existent, and we're very pleased that Genetic Savings & Clone's attempt to run a cloning pet store was a spectacular flop," he added.

GSC's voicemail recording refers customers interested in storing of a pet’s DNA for later use to ViaGen, Inc., a biotechnology company in Austin that provides animal breeding and cloning services.

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