Question
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answers by Lord Drayson on 19 May 2009 (WA 290), Baroness Wilcox on 3 October 2011 (WA 114–5), Baroness Garden of Frognal on 5 November 2012 (WA 168) and Lord Marland on 4 December 2012 (WA 131), whether the journal article "detailing further findings on the therapeutic potential and efficiency" of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) still remains unpublished following the end of Professor Mary Herbert’s research study; if so, what are the reasons for the apparent lack of progress; if not, when they advised that the article had been published; how the derivation of embryonic stem cells (ESC) following nuclear transfer as described in the article has improved on the efficiency of ESC derivation from clones as previously described by others in 2013 in the journal Cell (Volume 153, Issue 6, pages 1228–38) and the journal Cell Stem Cell (Volume 14, Issue 6, pages 777–80); and what were the novel "technological advances" described by Professor Herbert "to improve the efficiency of SCNT in human oocytes" and thus "develop a reproducible method of generating human embryonic stem cells".
Answer
The journal article referred to in Lord Marland’s response of 4th December 2012 has been published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. The relevant paper (Therapeutic potential of somatic cell nuclear transfer for degenerative disease caused by mitochondrial DNA mutations, Greggains Gareth D (2014), Scientific Reports 4, Article number: 3844 doi:10.1038/srep03844) can be viewed at: http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140124/srep03844/full/srep03844.html