WISCONSIN: UW Researchers Cope With Stem Cell Limits
From staff/news services
March 3, 2004

Scientists across the country are lamenting a new report that many federally approved stem cell colonies are useless,
but the effect on the University of Wisconsin's pioneering stem cell program has been minimal.

"This information has been out there for some time. I don't think it's something that people in the business wouldn't
know," Andy Cohn, spokesman for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, said of today's report that at least 16 of
the 78 human stem cell colonies approved by President Bush for federal research money have died or failed to reproduce
in their laboratory dishes - making them useless to scientists.

UW scientists say all of their 13 stem cell colonies are still good.

"In a perfect world, sure, we would like restrictions on stem cell research to be lifted - absolutely we would. But in
the meantime, there is still a lot of basic research to be done, and we press on," Cohn said.

His comments came after the Washington Post, in a copyrighted story, reported today that according to an unpublished
National Institutes of Health analysis, only about a quarter of the Bush-approved cell colonies are ever likely to be
available, far fewer than supporters of the president's policy had predicted.

Moreover, several of the Bush-approved colonies already available to researchers are beginning to show genetic
abnormalities, potentially undermining their medical usefulness, researchers said.

Advocates of stem cell research, who believe it offers the possibility of curing a range of diseases from diabetes to
Parkinson's, said these developments confirmed fears they expressed in 2001, when Bush announced he would allow federal
funding only for stem cell colonies that had already been extracted from human embryos as of Aug. 9 of that year.

Cohn agreed, repeating scientists' statements at the time that stem cell research is capable of "changing the face of
medicine."

"And the only way that's going to happen is to have as many researchers as possible working with as much access to stem
cell colonies as possible," Cohn said in an interview this morning with The Capital Times. "That's the only way
possible to find the treatments and cures from this research that we think are possible."

But UW-Madison's program has been operating since 1999 with the understanding that much of its federally funded stem
cell research would have to be supplemented with stem cell lines from private sources, Cohn said.

He also acknowledged that in the wake of the NIH analysis, Harvard University has offered other researchers free access
to its 17 lines of human embryonic stem cells that were developed without federal money.

UW-Madison, too, has been offering stem cells to scientists around the country at a cost of only $900, which also
includes instruction on how to handle them during two-day seminars, Cohn said.

More than 180 U.S. scientists have taken advantage of the offer to date, he said.

"Some of these researchers are from UW-Madison, but 90 percent of them are from all over the country," he explained.
"So the idea that Harvard is distributing their lines for free really is not new either. We charge a fee, but you have
to understand that it doesn't really come close to covering our costs."

Two congressional Democrats, Henry Waxman of California and Louise Slaughter of New York, on Tuesday accused the Bush
administration of misleading the public by continuing to claim that the policy allows for robust scientific research.
In a stinging letter to the White House, they declared that the new NIH analysis "casts into doubt the adequacy of your
policy on stem cell research."

Sensing that the tide may be shifting in their favor, other scientific organizations have stepped up their campaign to
ease restrictions on the controversial research, which makes use of embryos slated for destruction by fertility
clinics, according to today's Washington Post story.

"I think the administration has been trying to implement the existing policy in good faith," said Lawrence Soler of the
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which supports expanding federally funded research. "I think it's just come to a
point now of having to face that we're not as far as we had hoped we'd be - or even, we believe, where the
administration had hoped we'd be."

The administration said it was planning no change of policy.

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said that "the president remains committed to exploring the promise of stem cell
research but continues to firmly believe that we should not cross a fundamental moral line by funding or encouraging
the destruction of human embryos."

The debate centers on a policy that has been among the most contentious of Bush's tenure. Democrats have generally been
united in supporting broad research on embryonic stem cells, while the Republican majority in Congress has been sharply
divided.

Scientists are excited about the cells because, unlike most adult cells, they can morph into nearly any tissue in the
human body. Researchers hope to grow large numbers of cells in the laboratory and then coax them into becoming brain
cells that might cure Parkinson's disease, pancreatic cells to cure diabetes, and so on.

But creating a laboratory colony of stem cells requires destroying a 5-day-old human embryo. Social conservatives have
opposed the work, saying embryo destruction is tantamount to murder. Torn between this group and disease-research
advocates, including Nancy Reagan, Bush announced a compromise on Aug. 9, 2001, that precluded federally funded
research on cells from embryos destroyed after that date. That effectively froze the supply.

The president initially said more than 60 colonies would qualify - a number that surprised many biologists, who were
unaware of colonies created at private companies and foreign laboratories. The large number helped to quell criticism
that Bush was limiting a promising field of medicine. As others announced that they, too, had cells from before that
date, the number of eligible colonies grew to 78.

But in recent weeks, the NIH has been posting information on the Internet showing that 16 of the colonies "failed to
expand into undifferentiated cell cultures," meaning the cells are useless for further research, though it's unclear
how many colonies are dead and how many have simply stopped reproducing.

At one company, CyThera Inc. of San Diego, nine colonies have collapsed, eliminating more than 10 percent of the
administration's list. So have six colonies at a laboratory in Sweden and one at a company in Athens, Ga.

It's not unusual for cell colonies to "crash" in biology, particularly in early research, when scientists don't know
how best to grow the cells. Normally, they would simply replace a dead cell colony - but under Bush's policy they
cannot.

Most of the remaining Bush-approved colonies are in overseas labs. The NIH acknowledged recently that most of those
labs have shown no interest in supplying stem cells to U.S. researchers. Some foreign labs also face legal restrictions
on exportation.

Add all the factors together and the "best-case scenario" is that only 23 cell colonies will ever be available to
American researchers, an NIH administrator, James Battey, said recently in the unpublished report to Congress.

In addition, several of the 15 approved cell colonies that are already being distributed to scientists have been going
bad, developing severe genetic abnormalities that could make them useless as therapies and in some cases impractical
even for research. Experts suspect that other cells now in use are also accumulating DNA glitches that willrequire them
to be replaced at some point.

Many scientists felt the Bush-approved cell colonies were sufficient to get a start on the research. But as they learn
more about how to nurture stem cells and use them to create new tissues, some of them now say the restrictions are
becoming increasingly burdensome.

Some are using private money to create fresh colonies, but those funds are limited. Leading stem cell researchers said
the United States is already falling behind as foreign labs, unencumbered by Bush's restrictions, grow new colonies
using improved techniques.

"Federally funded scientists have to drive Model T's while Korean scientists get to drive around in the newest
Porsche," said George Daley, a stem cell researcher at Harvard University. "It's crazy."

Published: 9:48 AM 3/03/04

SOURCE: The Capital Times, Madison, WI
http://tinyurl.com/2yow7

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