If you have used the Center for Advanced Reproductive Services and have completed fertility treatment, you may wish to give remaining frozen embryos to embryonic stem cell research.
The pre-implantation embryo, at about four or five days of development, contains an inner cell mass, a group of approximately 100 cells from which embryonic stem cells may be derived. These cells can be cultured by researchers in a laboratory. What makes these cells unique is that they are pluripotent, which means they have the potential to form any kind of cell in the body, and many of them can be formed in a dish in the laboratory. This quality gives them a special ability to be used in the laboratory to study many types of disease. They can provide a tool to study early human development to which researchers did not previously have access. They may also be used in drug development to screen out medications which have harmful side effects to human beings that may not be detectable in animal trials.
On June 15, 2005, Public Act 05-149 was signed into law by the Governor of the State of Connecticut. The goal of this act is to provide 100 million dollars in state public funding to attract new research scientists and businesses to Connecticut. As carefully determined by the Connecticut Stem Cell Research Peer Review and Advisory Committees, almost 20 million dollars in funding has been provided to stem cell researchers in Connecticut. Dr. Ren-He Xu’s laboratory is one of these recipients.
Dr. Ren-He Xu has an been studying human embryonic stem cells in the laboratory for more than six years, five with Dr. James Thomson, who discovered the technique to first derive them. Since leaving Wisconsin, Dr. Xu has set up a Stem Cell Core Laboratory at the UConn Health Center to share his considerable expertise with Connecticut researchers. He aims to derive human embryonic stem cell lines to study genetic disease and early human development.
If you would like more information about the process by which to donate your frozen embryos for research, please contact the University of Connecticut Stem Cell Core administrator at 860-679-8350. Participation is strictly voluntary.
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