What do ES cells offer for basic research?
These cells have enormous value as research tools. The hope would be to use somatic cell nuclear transfer [SCNT] to generate human models of complex diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and diabetes. [In SCNT, an egg’s DNA would be replaced with DNA from a patient, and the egg would be used to generate patient-specific ES cells.] All the genetic mutations causing the disease would be present in the ES cell. If we could derive ES cells from a Parkinson’s patient, we would like to coax these cells into forming neurons, and as we study the process, hopefully find the defects that cause the disease. In other words, we can study a very complex disease in the Petri dish with the potential to look for compounds that treat it.
