Women from Sunderland and Durham are being sought for the scheme – known as egg sharing – which is being offered by the North East England Stem Cell Institute (Nesci) and the Newcastle Fertility Centre at Life.

Under the scheme, the Nesci research team can contribute about half of the cost of a patient's IVF treatment – £1,500 – in return for the donation of half of her eggs.

There have been 15 volunteers from the North East who have come forward and are now undergoing treatment, although none is yet from the Wearside area.

Professor Alison Murdoch, head of department at the Newcastle Fertility Centre at Life, said: "Volunteers have been essential to medical research for many years and this is a way of engaging volunteers from a wider field in a research project.

"Like all UK research, it will be strictly regulated at a local and national level by ethics committees and the principals of research governance.

"We expect this to open the door to some infertile women who may now find it less difficult to meet the cost of IVF."

The donated eggs will be used in a field of stem cell research known as nuclear re-programming, or therapeutic cloning, with the aim of deriving human embryonic stem cells.

Scientists from Durham and Newcastle Universities are studying the potential of stem cells to understand and treat conditions such as diabetes, Parkinson's disease and blood and liver diseases.

More donations of eggs are being sought to allow the research to progress quicker. Existing practice provided only 66 eggs in seven months.

Professor Michael Whitaker, Nesci chairman, based at the Centre for Life said: "Scientists in Newcastle were the first to successfully clone a human embryo, but one of the problems we're now facing in stem cell research is the necessarily limited availability of human eggs.

"Egg donation helps us solve the practical problem of how best to make human embryonic stem cells."

Women wishing to donate their eggs will have to fulfil strict criteria, after a process of counselling and screening.

So far 100 women have come forward, including some from Sunderland and Durham. Of these 15 North East women are now undergoing IVF treatment.

The Medical Research Council, which is funding the scheme, is supplying funding only for women who need IVF treatment because of infertility, and are aged between 21 and 35.

Priority will be given to couples in the North East who would be having treatment at the Newcastle Fertility Centre at Life.

To find out more about egg sharing, tel 282 5000, or download more information and a form at www.nesci.ac.uk