A colony of human ESCs (upper portion) made viause somatic-cell nuclear transfer, or cloningTACHIBANA ET AL/CELLLast month, scientists created human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) via nuclear transfer, or cloning—a breakthrough that will bring renewed interest in using embryonic stem cells to treat disease. But due to regulations of key US funding bodies, which restrict the use of human embryos in research, the work will be off limits to many labs, reported Nature.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds most of the work on stem cells in the United States, does not allow its researchers to use cells taken from embryos that were created solely for research. That rules out the stem cells produced by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University and colleagues, whose method involved creating an embryo by transferring the nucleus of a donor cell to an unfertilized egg cell in which the nucleus has been removed.
Researchers funded by the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) will also be excluded from studying the cells because Mitalipov’s team paid donors up to $7,000 for each egg they used in the experiments, and CIRM does not allow its researchers to use cell lines ...
