UCLA Researcher Calls for Easing of Restrictions on Stem Cell Lines Derived from Eggs From Paid Providers

Posted: July 24, 2013 at 10:07 am

A UCLA researcher has spoken out in
support of a proposal to allow use of California stem cell agency
funds to purchase stem cell lines derived from eggs provided by women
who have been paid for the service.
Kathrin Plath, an associate professor, said in a letter to the agency that she and her colleagues would like to use a line from the Oregon SCNT
experiment by Shoukhrat Mitalipov in which human stem cells were cloned. Currently agency funds cannot be used for that purpose as
a result of regulations that are the extension of a state law that
bars use of agency funds for payment for eggs.
The agency's standards group meets later today to consider changing those regulations. The proposal will
then go before the full board tomorrow.
Plath, who has received $5 million from CIRM, said,

“In my lab, we are ... interested in
understanding what happens to the somatically silenced X chromosome
when differentiated cells are reprogrammed by SCNT. The key question
is: are these SCNT-ESCs more similar to iPSCs or
fertilization-derived ESCs with respect to the epigenetic state of
the X chromosome. Furthermore, it has been shown in mouse
reprogramming that the active X chromosome becomes deregulated during
SCNT-based reprogramming, and we would like to address this problem
in the human system as well.

“We believe that the comparison of
the epigenetic states between fertilization-derived ESCs, SCNT-ESCs
and human iPSCs is important for a better characterization of these
cells and understanding of their epigenetic nature.”

Source:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/uqpFc/~3/2YTtgbJCtRw/ucla-researcher-calls-for-easing-of.html

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