Surgeons in Zhengzhou, China, are preparing to test the efficacy of neurons derived from embryonic stem cells (ESCs) as a treatment for Parkinson's disease—the first ESC-based clinical trial in China and the first anywhere in Parkinson's disease to use ESCs obtained from fertilized embryos. A second study, also to be conducted at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, will use ESC-derived cells to reverse vision loss caused by age-related macular degeneration. Both efforts are being led by Qi Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology in Beijing. For the trial in Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative condition that affects dopamine-producing cells, Zhou's team has selected ten patients who best match the HLA (human leukocyte antigen) types of ESCs in their cell bank. In a previous study in non-human primates, the researchers observed that ESCs injected into the brain turned into dopamine-releasing cells, according to Nature, which reported the trial go-ahead (Nature 546, 15–16, 2017). Last year, a group at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia initiated the first trial in Parkinson's disease using parthenogenetic neural stem cells from unfertilized eggs. The studies at Zhengzhou will follow regulations issued by China's National Health and Family Planning Commission in August 2015 aimed at preventing clinics from offering unauthorized and dubious treatments under the cloak of stem cell research. Such questionable practices had prompted China to place a moratorium on new clinical trials of stem cell therapies in 2012.