The Best Friends Again program has its roots in the Missyplicity Project, which began as an effort to clone a beloved and exceptional family dog named Missy. In 1997, news that Dolly the sheep had been cloned inspired a quest to find out whether Missy could also be cloned. In 1998 a multi-million dollar project was launched to clone Missy.
The news of this remarkable project spread quickly. Calls and emails poured in from people around the world who wanted to gene bank and clone their own remarkable pets. In response to this demand, several members of the Missyplicity Project founded Genetic Savings & Clone (GSC) in February 2000.
Missy died in 2002 at age 15 before efforts to clone her had succeeded. Her DNA was gene banked for future cloning efforts. Genetic Savings & Clone made significant advances in understanding the reproductive physiology of both dogs and cats. However, because of the unique challenges specific to cloning dogs and the high cost of the research, GSC made a business decision to shut down its operation in 2006. Despite the closing of GSC, the quest to clone Missy continued.
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