I moved from the Hubrecht to a medical school because I wanted to have access to patients. That was in 2008 I actually moved, became head of department there, and I had already been a professor since 2002 so it wasn't a big change. And that's what we did. And I was still debating whether to transplant the cells, but it was extremely difficult. We could cure mice, but curing a patient was going to be horrible, fibrosis and fat. And I just saw a heart that'd been taken out of a patient for transplant to have it replaced. I thought, there's no way we are going to ever, at least in the short term, do this. So, I went to IPS cells, and the irony is people have gone ahead with trying to use these cells for transplantation, which is fine and very heroic of them but the irony is that actually we know human embryonic stem cells are safer. IPS cells have been reprogrammed. And here the ethics has won it from safety in patients, which in itself is an ethical issue because we've decided many places have decided we'll do it with IPS cells, Germany, the EU, they want you to use IPS cells for transplantation rather than ES cells. And here they're more liberal minded. They use largely ES cells. So, Lorenz Studer and Chuck Murry are all using embryonic stem cells for transplantation because they're safer, so it's a very strange ethical situation.

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.