Therapeutic potential of somatic cell nuclear transfer for degenerative disease caused by mitochondrial DNA mutations

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) hold much promise in the quest for personalised cell therapies. However, the persistence of founder cell mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations limits the potential of iPSCs in the development of treatments for mtDNA disease. This problem may be overcome by using oocytes containing healthy mtDNA, to induce somatic cell nuclear reprogramming. However, the extent to which somatic cell mtDNA persists following fusion with human oocytes is unknown. Here we show that human nuclear transfer (NT) embryos contain very low levels of somatic cell mtDNA. In light of a recent report that embryonic stem cells can be derived from human NT embryos, our results highlight the therapeutic potential of NT for mtDNA disease, and underscore the importance of using human oocytes to pursue this goal.