Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether the experiments recommended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's expert review panel in the publication, Scientific review of the safety and efficacy of methods to avoid mitochondrial disease through assisted conception, published in April 2011, on the removal of the spindle or pronuclei and placing it back into the oocyte to show the effect of the maternal spindle transfer and pronuclear manipulation techniques has been concluded; and in which peer-reviewed journal his Department plans to publish the findings of those experiments.

We are advised that good progress is being made with the experiments recommended by the Expert Panel convened by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and that the scientists involved hope to be able to provide an update shortly.

The HFEA has advised that in their 2013 and 2014 reports the expert panel convened by the HFEA deemed these experiments to no longer be necessary, given the successful development to blastocyst stages after both Maternal Spindle Transfer (MST) and Pronuclear Transfer (PNT) with human oocytes and zygotes.

The Department does not routinely publish scientific research conducted independently by others.

Publications relating to the successful development to blastocyst stages after both MST and PNT with human oocytes and zygotes can be found in Nature.