Snuppy (Korean: 스너피, romanized: Seuneopi, a portmanteau of "SNU" and "puppy"; April 24, 2005 – May 2015)[2] was an Afghan hound, the first dog clone.
The puppy was created using a cell from an ear from an adult Afghan hound and involved 123 surrogate mothers, of which only two produced pups (Snuppy being the sole survivor).
The Department of Theriogenology and Biotechnology at Seoul National University, which cloned Snuppy, was led by Woo Suk Hwang.
[4] After several failed attempts by other scientists, Woo Suk Hwang, a lead researcher at Seoul National University, created a clone using tissue from the ear of a 3-year-old Afghan hound.
[5] Snuppy was named as a portmanteau of the initials of the Seoul National University (SNU) and the word "puppy".
[8] The nucleus of each egg was replaced with the cell from the ear of the adult dog and then electrified and fused using a chemical reaction.
The findings by HumanPass were dismissed on the grounds that they were employed by Hwang, and a panel at the Seoul National University ordered their own investigation.
[22] The world's first cloned sniffer dogs (all of which are named Toppy) were put to work by South Korean customs in July 2009.
[23] Supporters of Hwang founded a company called Sooam Biotech where Hwang developed proprietary techniques[24] based on a licence from ViaGen's subsidiary Start Licensing (which owns the original Dolly patent[25]) and created cloned dogs for owners whose dogs had died, charging $100,000 a time.