Chinese researchers announced that a cloned rhesus monkey has survived to adulthood

Cloning is the process of producing genetically identical organisms

It was first achieved in mammals in 1996 when Dolly the Sheep – cloned from the adult cell of another sheep – was born

In 2018, a team of Chinese researchers became the first to successfully clone primates when two cloned long-tailed macaques – a monkey species – survived birth

Those researchers have since attempted to clone the rhesus monkey, another primate species, which due to their genetic similarities to humans are valued for their use in animal testing

Despite advances in cloning technology, the process remains expensive, inefficient, and often unsuccessful

When the Chinese researchers successfully cloned the macaques in 2018, only two of the initial 109 embryos survived to birth

In 2022, researchers successfully cloned a rhesus monkey, but it only survived for 12 hours

The same team that cloned the macaques has since attempted to clone rhesus monkeys that could survive to adulthood

They determined that defects in the placenta, which provides nutrients and oxygen to fetuses, contributed to the high failure rate of cloned fetuses

To address that, researchers tweaked their cloning method to wrap the cloned embryo in a non-cloned outer membrane which could turn into a placenta that could carry a fetus to birth

Using that method, the Chinese researchers created 113 cloned rhesus fetuses, 11 of which were implanted into surrogate mothers

That resulted in two pregnancies, one of which led to a live birth

Per a study published in Nature Communications, that rhesus monkey is now over two years old

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