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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I do not know where to begin in challenging my noble friend Lord Alton. He makes a case for adult stem cells. I think that there is some legitimate reason to do so, but not as much as he claims. He does not feel that there is a need for so-called interspecies or human admixed embryos. Rather, he makes a case for reprogrammed adult stem cells and cites Professor Yamanaka and Professor Sir Ian Wilmut as people who have abandoned human embryonic stem cell research. None of this is true. Let us rehearse the whole argument. What are reprogrammed induced pluripotent stem cells? I have said in this House twice before that it is the holy grail for all stem cell scientists one day to have no need to use human embryos or any form of admixed embryos for research, but to take an adult skin cell and reprogramme it to be a cell that truly behaves like an embryonic stem cell. They want a cell that is able in its totality to behave like a human embryonic stem cell. What have we got? We have the most fantastic research that has been announced in the past six to eight weeks where it has been possible to take a human adult somatic cell and reprogramme it to a cell that looks and seems initially to behave like an embryonic stem cell. That has been achieved using what we call viral vectors, initially by using one viral vector that is a powerful oncogene—a substance that produces cancer. When that vector was used in a mouse model, it did exactly that by producing extensive teratomas in the mice. That vector has since been removed, but others still remain. When the cells are examined, each has a minimum of 20 injections of such vectors. We have to learn how to remove those vectors from every cell before they will be available for therapy. That research is, of course, exciting more and more stem-cell scientists. More and more of them will thus turn their attention to working on induced pluripotent stem cells because, in the long run, that may offer the greatest advantage. Let me use an analogy; we have found a yellow metal that looks like gold and, initially, seems to behave like gold. Yet we do not know whether it is gold, and the only way to test that in totality is to test against the gold that we know—the human embryonic stem cells. Furthermore, none of this work would have been possible if we had not allowed the initial research on such stem cells. That research produced the science that made it possible to use viral vectors to induce pluripotency in adult cells. If the noble Lord, Lord Alton, wants to challenge me to examine the science on that, I will take that challenge. Adult stem cells have delivered a lot, particularly in the treatment of hematopoietic diseases. The noble Lord referred to a register; there are lots of registers from trials of adult stem cells, but some of them have produced successes. It is sometimes difficult to assess those registers, because if you look at them just putting ““stem cell”” produces several types. None the less, I accept that adult stem cells have produced therapies. The problem is that those cells do not have the capacity to differentiate into all the cell types. Adult stem cells are not stable and, often, the treatment is for a particular patient and cannot be expanded to the large majority of patients. Those cells are not useful for developing certain therapies, particularly for degenerative diseases. Is there a reason to support embryonic stem cell research? Yes, as a much larger number of patients can, potentially, be treated due to the indefinite self-renewal of human embryonic stem cells. For instance, the so-called Edmonton protocol uses islets from two or three cadaveric donors for each diabetic patient treated. That would be possible for many more patients using embryonic stem cells. Eight to 10 foetuses aborted between six and eight weeks from gestation are also required to treat each Parkinson’s patient. Embryonic stem cell research is often criticised for having failed to deliver after so many years. In reality, although human embryonic stem cells were derived in 1998, access to them was very limited for several years because of strict licensing, arrangements related to material transfer, and the logistics of expanding the existing characterised cell lines that were particularly imposed by laws in the United States. The first person to get the lines from Jamie Thompson in Wisconsin—the researcher mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton—who identified and developed the induced pluripotent cells in humans was Peter Andrews at Sheffield University; most of the labs did not have access to human embryonic stem cell lines until 2003. Indeed, the first HFEA licence to derive human embryonic stem cell lines was not granted until 2003. Normally, the time from discovery of a small molecule to its development into therapeutic use is anywhere between 20 and 40 years. For example, monoclonal antibodies took 20 years to be developed in the United Kingdom. We abandoned that research. The United States took it up and it is now a £2 billion business for treating patients. Given that and even in the light of the previous existence of Murai ES cells, the development of potential therapy from human embryonic stem cells is progressing well. The first clinical trial using human embryonic derived stem cells could commence later this year in the United States to treat spinal cord injury with human embryonic stem cell derived oligodendrocytes—neuronal cells that repair spinal damage. UK scientists have said that they are within three to five years of a clinical trial. It is possible that a trial might be started in the United Kingdom within two years for the treatment of age related macular degeneration—some noble Lords may understand what that means—