Spaniard wins CHA award for stem cell work

Carlos Simon Valles

CHA Medical Group announced yesterday that the recipient of the 2014 KY Cha Award in stem cell technology is Carlos Simon Valles, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Valencia, Spain, and Stanford University.

The award was given to Valles during the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) meeting held in Hawaii on Oct. 22. Valles received a $20,000 grant for his project “Direct Conversion of Human Somatic Cells to Meiotic Germ-like Cells by Genetic Reprogramming.”

The Spaniard is the second recipient of the KY Cha Award, which was created by ASRM.

The award is named after CHA Medical Group Chairman Cha Kwang-yul to recognize talented doctors and scientists who have contributed to stem cell and infertility research.

The Spanish professor has been researching reproductive cells and infertility since 1991.

He has recently been studying reprogramming somatic cells into reproductive cells.

In receiving the award, Valles thanked both ASRM and Cha. He added that the work his team is doing is similar to the research that the Korean medical group is doing on transferring the nucleus of human somatic cells for use in stem cells and said he was interested in working with the team at CHA.

As part of the convention on Oct. 21, the Korean medical group said it held a stem cell research symposium that was attended by leading experts in the field, including Prof. Allan Spradling of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Prof. Kyle Orwig of the University of Pittsburgh and Prof. Hugh Taylor of Yale University.

BY LEE HO-JEONG [ojlee82@joongang.co.kr]