BELGIUM: Scientists in Belgium have developed another potential source for the embryonic stem cells sought by medical researchers, unripe human eggs left over from fertility treatments.
The technique will remain controversial however, as it still results in the destruction of a cloned embryo when the stem cells are harvested.
Unused mature eggs donated after fertility treatments have provided a source of eggs for embryo cloning but these are in short supply. About 10-15 per cent of the eggs recovered during treatment are unripe eggs however and unsuitable for fertility treatment. The research team from Ghent University Hospital have developed a method to ripen these eggs in the laboratory and then use them to create embryos for stem cell research and therapeutic cloning.
"We have created an alternative source for human eggs for cloning," said Dr Joisiane Van der Elst, who with colleague Bjorn Heindryckx presented the research yesterday to a meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. The researchers matured and then successfully cloned the eggs but have yet to prove they can extract stem cells from them. The cloned embryos grew to the eight to 16 cell stage, too early to provide stem cells.