The SCBEM Code of Practice sets out standards to ensure that research using these models is rigorous, ethically sound, and maximises potential benefits. One of the most crucial aspects of the code is the establishment of a dedicated Oversight Committee tasked with reviewing each proposed research project. Professor Kathy Niakan, Chair of Cambridge Reproduction and Professor of Reproductive Physiology at the University of Cambridge, explained: \u201cThe new Code of Practice provides processes for decision-making in research using stem cell-based embryo models so that scientists can proceed confidently, while maintaining public trust in this vital area of research.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commenting on the new code of practice, Professor Robin Lovell-Badge FRS FMedSci, Group Leader, Francis Crick Institute, said: \u201cGuidelines and Codes of Practice are very useful governance mechanisms, especially for fast moving fields of science. They can be developed, enacted and updated much faster than hard laws, and with buy-in from trusted members of the relevant scientific community they can reassure both researchers, who generally want to work within clear boundaries, and the public that ethical barriers will be respected. Peer pressure, standards set by critical stakeholders, including funders and science publishers, and the risk that a potentially valuable field of research can be damaged or even closed down by laws, all help to reduce the likelihood of something being done by a researcher that crosses boundaries and loses public trust. Of course, there can be maverick or rogue scientists who go too far, but these tend to be individuals who would not even respect hard laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Code of Practice for the generation and use of stem cellbased embryo models (SCBEMs) that has been developed by the group established by the University of Cambridge and Progress Educational Trust will fill a critical gap in the UK\u2019s regulatory landscape. It is designed to be flexible and to accommodate advances in the field, but through its recommendation to have robust review of projects, it should give reassurance to all interested parties that ethical boundaries will be respected while permitting much valuable research. It adds to the Guidelines published by the International Society for Stem Cell Research in 2021, which include work with SCBEMs (although these are already a little out of date), but in a way that will mesh better with the UK\u2019s way of governing research on human embryology.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t yet know where the research on SCBEMs will take us, most likely, however, it will be in multiple directions that will give us much better understanding than we currently have of normal human embryo development, of situations where it goes wrong, whether IVF failure, miscarriage, congenital disorders, or adverse effects of drugs and other substances used in pregnant women, and, hopefully of ways to avoid such problems. They will never completely replace the need for using some normal human embryos in research, in part because the models need to be validated by comparing them with the latter, but because they can be generated in large numbers, the SCBEMs will permit types of research that could not be conducted on embryos, such as screens for biologically important drugs or genes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>
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