A group of medical experts has succeeded at improving the efficiency of human somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) by three times.
 
A research team at Cha Medical Group said Friday that it found ways to enhance the efficiency of SCNT by discovering a correlation between the quality of female eggs and the success rate of SCNT embryo development.
 
Led by Cha University Professor Lee Dong-ryul and Harvard Medical School Professor Zhang Yi, the team found that an enzyme called histone H3 lysine 9 trimethylation, or H3K9me3, limits the efficiency of SCNT. 
 
The researchers also learned that an injection of another enzyme called H3K9me3 demethylase, or Kdm4d, limits the histone enzyme and can improve the success rate of SCNT embryo development from less than two percent to some seven percent. 
 
The team said it has made five pilot medicine products using the new findings and plans to seek the government’s approval for a large-sized clinical test by the end of this year. 
 
The research was funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the National Research Foundation of Korea and was posted on authoritative science journal, “Cell Stem Cell.”