So, that's how I happened to know all those people and that's how I happened to go to Australia because in the meantime, Martin Pera's project in Oxford was not going so well. I knew he was looking for another job, so I gave people the right hints and he got recruited to Australia, to Melbourne. They said I could have the cells and the same minister of health who was trying to get this legislation through before the government fell, I told her that I did have this offer to get the cells in Australia. When you go to these meetings where there's a minister and they want to speak to you, they sort of push you in a corner and there's, you could almost say a ring of handmaidens around her and you have a private conversation so nobody could hear.

There's the two of us in the corner. She said, I would really like it if you went to Australia and got those cells. And she said, the reason is the Dutch don't like hypocrisy, so they won't like it if there are cells in the country, which they are not allowed to derive themselves. They don't like that kind of inconsistency. So, I said, okay, it's fine with me. So, I went with my two best technicians to Melbourne. We learned how to culture the cells, but we didn't know how to transport them so we brought them back in the plane, all warm under our sweaters, these plastic bottles, and took them back to the Netherlands.

We have them all frozen, but we didn't know how to freeze the cells in those days. A little bit later you could do it in something called a dry shipper, but you couldn't do it then. Not with any reason that we survive.

Dr. Christine Mummery is a professor of developmental biology at Leiden University and head of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology at the Leiden University Medical Center. Her work specializes in stem cell biology, cardiovascular development, and developmental biology.

In 1974, she received her Bachelor of Science degree in physics, electronics, and mathematics from the University of Nottingham, UK and in 1978 received her PhD in biophysics from the University of London, UK for her research at King’s College London. She received a post-doctoral fellowship at the Royal Society, UK from 1978 to 1980, and in 1981 continued her fellowship at the Hubrecht Institute working with carcinoma cells. In 1985, she was appointed to a tenured staff scientist working on developmental biology and differentiation.

In 2011, Dr. Mummery founded the iPSC&OoC Hotel facility in the Leiden University Medical Center. From 2009 to 20019, she was the head of the department of Anatomy and Embryology at Leiden University and guest professor at the University of Twente from 2015 to 2023. She was president of the ISSCR from 2020 to 2021 and is the founding editor of its journal, Stem Cell Reports.

Dr. Mummery has received several awards for her work in developmental biology, including the 2014 Hugo van de Poelgeest Prize for Animal Alternatives, the 2014 Hans Biomendaal Medal for innovative interdisciplinary research, being an elected member of the Academia Europaea in 2015 and Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010, the 2021 Fondation Lefoulon Delalande-Institut de France prize for cardiovascular physiology, and the ISSCR Public Service Award in 2023.