Dan, a 40-something investment counselor from Southern California, became the second paying client to receive a pet clone when Genetic Savings & Clone (GSC) officials delivered a kitten to his door on Tuesday, February 8. "Little Gizmo" is a clone of Gizmo, his mixed breed Siamese who died at age 13 in March 2004.

"Valentine's Day is a special day for GSC, because our business is all about the love between people and their exceptional pets," said Lou Hawthorne, GSC CEO, who delivered Little Gizmo with Mike Hodnett, the company's VP of Sales & Marketing. "With our second commercial cat clone delivery, we have again duplicated an exceptional pet, and made a certain client very, very happy."

Dan, who requested that his last name be withheld for privacy, was among the first five people to sign up for GSC's cat cloning service, which became available in February 2005 on a limited basis at the price of $50,000. One company client received her cloned kitten in December; the others will receive theirs within the next few months.

"There are no words to describe how happy I am," Dan wrote in an email to Hodnett after spending time with Little Gizmo.

Company policy is to counsel clients that, because behavior is influenced by environment as well as by genes, clones may not behave exactly as their genetic donors did. Nonetheless, both of the clients who have now received clones say that not only do they look like their predecessors, but their behavior is strikingly similar as well.

"She is exact, exact, exact in all of her mannerisms, habits, traits and personality," Dan wrote of Little Gizmo's similarity to Gizmo. Little Gizmo was born in Austin, Texas, where GSC has done most of its cloning research and development. The company's business headquarters is located in Sausalito, California.

Phil Damiani, Ph.D., GSC's new Chief Scientific Officer, describes Little Gizmo as yet another example of the excellent results the company is achieving with chromatin transfer (CT), the technology GSC has exclusively licensed for use in pet cloning. CT is more advanced than NT, the method used to produce Dolly and most other clones. Every cat produced by GSC except CC, the world's first cat clone, is the result of the CT process.

"Not only has chromatin transfer helped us produce healthy, normal cats," Dr. Damiani said, "but it has also increased our efficiency, which means we require fewer mothers than we would otherwise." The increased efficiency of the CT process is one reason that GSC today announced a reduced price of $32,000 for the cat cloning service.

Before joining GSC, Dr. Damiani worked at several leading cloning companies, coordinating research on cows, pigs, dogs, cats, and endangered species, including the Gaur, an endangered relative of the ox, which he cloned in 2000. Dr. Damiani also worked in South Africa establishing a gene bank and assisted reproduction laboratory for wild animals, and helped establish the cloning program at the Audubon Nature Institute's Center for Research of Endangered Species (AICRES). Dr. Damiani received his doctorate in Reproductive Physiology from the University of Massachusetts, and has published numerous publications, patents and patents pending.

"As an animal lover and dog owner, the welfare of animals is very important to me," Dr. Damiani said. "GSC's excellent standards of animal care, combined with the expertise of its scientists, made joining the company an easy choice for me."

Animal welfare is among the ethical issues the company regularly addresses in its public communications. GSC will host a media briefing on "The Ethics of Pet Cloning" via teleconference on Wednesday, February 16 at 11 a.m. PST.

This will be followed immediately by a second media briefing teleconference on "The Science of Pet Cloning." Each briefing will include a question-and-answer period. Interested journalists should contact GSC for more information at 888-833-6063.

GSC turns five years old today, having opened on Valentine's Day, 2000. In addition to commercial cat cloning, GSC is intensively researching dog cloning, and expects to produce the first cloned dog in 2005. Interested parties can learn more on the company web site at http://www.savingsandclone.com or by calling 888-833-6063.

CONTACT: Ben Carlson 415-497-9342
Genetic Savings & Clone, Inc.
savingsandclone.com