Eric Overström

Professor Overström, a developmental biologist, is a member of the faculty at Tufts University, the School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Massachusetts, the Department of Anatomy & Cellular Biology, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, and the Program in Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology, Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, Boston. He received his Ph.D. in Reproductive Physiology from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst in 1981 and subsequently trained as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Laboratory for Human Reproduction & Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School in Boston prior to joining the Tufts faculty.

Application of Cloning to the Production of Biopharmaceuticals to Treat Human and Animal Disease

Research in his laboratory focuses on both fundamental studies of preimplantation stage embryos of domestic (goats, cattle, pigs) and laboratory animals (rodents), and applied studies to improve reproductive efficiency in these species. With respect to the former, his laboratory engaged in fundamental research focused on cell and molecular mechanisms of early embryo development, including the production of transgenic and cloned animals, in species including the pig, cow, goat and rodents. Current research is directed at understanding 1) cell cycle synchronicity of cytoplasts and karyoplasts in cloned embryos produced by somatic cell nuclear transfer (NT) and 2) activation-induced interactions between meiotic spindle-associated factors and the cytoplasm on their role in establishing developmental competence of the bovine, caprine and murine nuclear transfer (NT) embryo. With respect to the latter, the lab has been successful in producing transgenic swine and mice, and more recently the laboratory reported the production of the first cloned transgenic goats using novel somatic cell nuclear transfer methods (Baguisi et al, 1999). Moreover, this work has since led to the development of improved methods for cloning mice with success rates >25%.