Looks like new embryonic stem cell research is going to be set up in my
neck of the woods.  :-)

There was a followon editorial in the Startribune as well......

Paul


University to launch human embryo research effort

Josephine Marcotty, Star Tribune

Published February 8, 2004
The University of Minnesota, a leader in adult-stem-cell research, is
planning to launch similar work with human embryos, a controversial area
of science that has been thwarted by federal funding restrictions.
University scientists intend to use private funding and donated embryos
to create new sources of stem cells. They say the new science holds
enormous potential for advances in medicine and promises to reveal how
the human body grows from a bundle of cells.
It results in the destruction of human embryos used to create endlessly
repeating lines of highly adaptable cells. That could generate a
backlash against the university from religious and abortion-opposition
groups advocating the belief that life begins at conception.
The research is so controversial that university officials did not ask
Gov. Tim Pawlenty, an abortion opponent, to include funding for it in
his $35 million biosciences initiative announced last week.
Abortion politics also have influenced federal policy, which has sharply
restricted funding for embryo stem cell research since 2001.
Nevertheless, the initiative has the full backing of top university
officials. They say the university must pursue all types of stem cell
research, or fall behind other research institutions in the United
States and other countries.
Dr. Frank Cerra, the university's senior vice president for health
sciences, said such controversial research should be conducted at a
public university because the public has an interest in how it's done
and the medical advances that come from it. "It provides the
transparency that I think is required to address all the issues that
surround it -- legal, ethical, moral, you name it," he said.
Embryonic stem cell research would take place in campus labs funded with
money from nonprofit and biotech companies because of the federal
restrictions. Cerra said no public money would be sought. Some
scientists already are seeking private grants, including one researcher
who said he needs $1 million over the next two years. It is unclear how
much the entire embryo research effort will cost.
In a sign of the sensitivity of the issue, Pawlenty has been told of the
university's plans, but he has not taken a position on them. His press
secretary, Leslie Kupchella, declined to answer other questions.
Passions, restrictions
Passions run high on both sides of the debate. Groups that oppose
abortion object to research that destroys human embryos.
"We all started out that way," said Dr. Steven Moore, a physician and
secretary treasurer of the Minnesota branch of the Catholic Medical
Association, which opposes research with human embryos. "To enhance the
quality of life of one human does not justify the deliberate destruction
of another," he said.
During an interview, university stem cell researcher Dr. John Wagner, a
professor of pediatrics who treats children with blood diseases, pulled
out a color photograph of a baby covered with lesions from an inherited
skin disease. He said the parents sent him the picture, one of many such
pleas from parents who hope that stem cell research will benefit their
children.
"We have the capacity to move this forward," he said. "But we need the
emotional and financial support of the community."
In 2001, President Bush offered researchers a compromise on such
research. The federal government would fund studies using the
approximately 70 stem cell lines that had already been created from
human embryos. No federal money is available for research on new stem
cell lines.
Since then, researchers have complained that only about a dozen approved
stem cell lines are available to study. Most others are privately held
or not useful for human study because they were contaminated by mouse
cells used in growth mediums. A few cell lines are controlled by
universities, including the University of Wisconsin, which has supplied
cells to some Minnesota researchers.
"Do I think a small number of lines are enough? No," said Dr. Doris
Taylor, a cardiac researcher at the University of Minnesota and one of
the first nationally to use adult stem cells to repair damaged hearts.
"The world is more diverse than that."
Despite the federal restrictions, the National Institutes of Health has
published accounting rules allowing universities to use private funds to
develop new stem cell lines without putting other federal research money
at risk.
Now, "science is marching forward," said Kevin Wilson, spokesman for the
American Society for Cell Biology, an association that lobbies for stem
cell research. The University of Minnesota is one of several U.S.
institutions that plans to use private funding under the federal rules.
The University of Wisconsin was the first to do so several years ago.
Now the list includes Harvard University, Stanford University and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"My guess is that it will be increasing," Wilson said. "You could say
that 2004 will be the year that a lot of this takes hold."
But finding private funding might prove difficult. The Juvenile Diabetes
Foundation funds embryonic-stem-cell work, as do other disease awareness
groups. But their funds pale compared with the amounts that the federal
government traditionally puts into basic health-sciences research.
Private companies, mainly in the pharmaceutical industry, invest in
research that will lead to new drugs and treatments, but that work often
evolves from government-financed basic research.
The budget for the National Institutes of Health this year is $27
billion. Of that, $323 million is dedicated to adult-stem-cell research,
and $95 million to human embryonic-stem-cell research on the approved
cell lines.
"The public invests at the front end in basic science, and the private
sector invests in the back end," said Jeff Kahn, director of the
university's Center for Bioethics. "Now they are asking us to turn that
around."
Stem cells inspire excitement across the field of medicine because of
their potential to rebuild tissue damaged by diseases such as
Parkinson's and diabetes, or to treat inherited diseases. But scientists
still don't know how to harness the power of embryonic stem cells, or
how they differ from the adult stem cells found in bone marrow by Dr.
Catherine Verfaillie, director of the university's Stem Cell Institute.
Both can be manipulated into becoming many different kinds of cells or
tissue. But in some ways they are opposites, said Dr. Dan Kaufman, a
researcher and assistant professor of medicine. Embryonic stem cells
multiply endlessly, but it's harder to get them to diversify. Adult stem
cells won't replicate indefinitely, but they more easily become
different kinds of cells.
Embryonic stem cells might shed light on how the body works and diseases
evolve. Wagner, for example, wants to build a library of donated embryos
with known genetic diseases. Researchers can create unique stem cell
lines that might reveal how a disease develops inside human cells as
they multiply.
Taylor said she wants to study embryonic stem cells to learn what cues
the body needs to create new cells and new organs. "They know how to do
it," she said.
Drug companies might be interested in using stem cells to create human
cells on which experimental drugs could be tested in the lab.
"You could make cardiac cells, which you can't grow easily," Taylor
said. "You can make nerve cells. And you have reproduciable test beds
for drugs. There is probably funding available for that right now."
That troubles many scientists. When private companies control the
research money, they might also control the research -- and its
availability to the public. Scientists at the university say they can
try to negotiate contracts that allow them to share significant findings.
There still need to be mechanisms that allow the research to be done in
the public eye, Kahn said. Doing it "in the sunshine" is what made the
United States the undisputed world leader in biomedical research -- a
position it is now in danger of losing, he said.
"If we can't figure out a way to allow public and private investment to
happen at the same place, the money will go somewhere else," he said.

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