South Korea to Supply SCNT Cells

South Korea to Supply SCNT Cells

An article appearing in today’s Boston Globe (reader registration may be required to view the whole article) reports that South Korean researchers are set to supply cloned cells to researchers in other countries who cannot generate them in their own laboratories. The South Korean group is led by Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, who is the team leader for the only group so far to successfully use SCNT (Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer) on humans. It will be funded in part by the South Korean government and work in collaboration with fertility clinics in the United States and Britain.

American scientists response is mixed; the article quoted one scientists as saying that Americans need to learn and innovate with the technology themselves.

This story will no doubt be widely reported, and I will blog again as I learn more. A PDF file of an extensive “Perspective” on the subject is available on the web site for the New England Journal of Medicine.

Stem Cells Can Develop Into Gametes

Stem Cells Can Develop Into Gametes

The American Society of Reproductive Medicine issued a press release today reporting that researchers at Cornell University were able to generate additional lines of pluripotent stem cells from an egg and an existing stem cell. The existing stem cell lost half its chromosomes and functioned as the male germ cell. Another team of scientists at the University of Pennsylvania did research on mouse eggs, which “concluded that mouse embryonic stem cells were capable of being cultured in a laboratory to develop into gametes.”