Lecturer/Position/Organization: Prof. Miodrag Stojkovic, Deputy Director, Centre for Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics, University of Newcastle, UK; Deputy Director Principe Felipe Centre, Valencia, Spain
Session/Theme: Stem Cells Science and Policies
Title of the presentation: Progress in nuclear transfer technique and embryonic stem cell biology: too fast, too scary?

Nuclear transfer (NT) technique requires the introduction of a nucleus from an adult donor cell into an enucleated oocyte to generate a NT embryo. In culture, early NT embryos can give rise to NT stem cells (NTSC) that have the same potential as human embryonic stem cells (hESC) derived from donated fertilised embryos. That means that NTSC have the potential to become almost any type of cell present in the adult body. In animals, transplantation of cells derived using the NT technique has been successfully applied in parkinsonian mice and in humans NT might substantially improve the medical treatment of many incurable diseases avoiding immunological rejection after cell transplantation. In addition, NTSC lines could be very useful in the development of in vitro human disease models for basic research, drug discovery and toxicology. Nuclear transfer embryos and NTSC offer an excellent opportunity to study the effect of oocyte-derived mitochondrial (mt) proteins in somatic cells obtained by NT, the role of mtDNA, cell reprogramming, genetic and epigenetic status of derived NTSC (Stojkovic et al., 2004).
These applications and prospects for developing patient specific NTSC lines have been circulating in the scientific and media circles since the late nineties. However, until recently it was restricted to discussions relating to ethical concerns and potential benefits. New perspectives and possible application of human NT to study pathogenesis of genetic diseases caused an increase in the number of countries (in addition to UK, Belgium, Finland, Sweden) that permit or consider permission of human NT. However, such research has been effectively halted in many states including the United States and their governmental non-funding policy. Therefore, in these countries some of the scientists are forced to do research which could be evaluated and criticized as a diversion of good science by politics (Weissman, 2005). Observing some public discussions and opinions there are undoubtedly clear symptoms that science moves too rapidly to keep in pace with societal, religious and moral thinking. It is not clear how long this issue will remain a heavily debated, but it is for sure that the non-scientific society need to adapt to the technological advancements of hESC and NTSC and their applications in modern medicine. As a result we would have uniform and transparent regulations which allow faster progress in fighting human diseases worldwide.