A a colony of human ESCs (upper portion) extracted from a blastocyst generated by SCNTCELL/TACHIBANA ET AL.Researchers have for the first time produced human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) using somatic nuclear transfer (SCNT), a method in which the nucleus of a donor cell—in this case a skin cell or fibroblast—is transferred to an egg cell whose own nucleus has been removed.
The work, published today (May 14) in Cell, opens up the possibility of an alternative source of patient-specific stem cells—which may not have the genetic and epigenetic abnormalities found in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), made by adding key genes to reprogram adult cells—to help scientists understand disease and develop cell-based therapies.
“I think it is a beautiful piece of work,” said George Daley of Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, who was not involved in the research, in an email to The Scientist. “[T]his group has become remarkably proficient at a very technically demanding procedure and [has] shown that SCNT-ESCs may in fact be a practical source of cells for regenerative medicine.”
SCNT has previously been used to clone animals and ...
