It was still a sensitive issue and we had an incredible lot of discussions on it, and I just presented myself as a person to present the facts, the numbers, the efficiencies and the like, and what you might do with them, but I never said we are going to cure patients. And that's where it went a little bit wrong in the US. People like who were wonderful in doing the publicity, Michael J. Fox, Christopher Reeve, Nancy Reagan, they did it all wonderfully but they promised too much.

And we knew that. The scientists and I felt it was, along with many others of course, it was our moral responsibility to not promise too much otherwise the hype grew and then it became a bit of a disaster in terms of what we promised. We know therapies take 20 years and the fact that we now have these stem cells moving to the clinic for diabetes, for macular degeneration, for Parkinson’s, is testimony to how many years it takes. So, I think we did it right mostly as scientists, but we are not very good at preventing the publicity seekers in doing it the right way.

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.