Good article from the Boston Globe highlighting stem cell research  in
other countries, other states, and privately funded projects.
Note also from article:
"US Representative Michael N. Castle, a Deleware Republican who helped
organize the House letter... said, support for stem cell research is
increasing (in Congress), and he added that he has been struck by the
degree to which some people change their minds when they meet with
patients who are suffering. ''There doesn't seem to be a lot of gray
area," Castle said. ''They become real advocates."

FROM: The Boston Globe
US stem cell research lagging
Without aid, work moving overseas
By Gareth Cook, Globe Staff  |  May 23, 2004

BRNO, Czech Republic -- Last spring, biologist Petr Dvorak's cellphone
rang with the news that his lab, a simple cement building not far from
the rolling farmland of Moravia, had just entered the forefront of global
science.

He rushed to work, down a cracked blacktop walkway and past a sagging
barbed-wire fence. Then Dvorak, 48, peered through a microscope and saw
what had triggered the call: He and his team had isolated a new line of
human embryonic stem cells.

''We were so happy," said Dvorak, who is a member of the Czech Academy of
Sciences. ''I couldn't sleep for a week."

Although the first human embryonic stem cell line was created in the
United States, a Globe survey has found that the majority of new
embryonic cell lines -- colonies of potent cells with the ability to
create any type of tissue in the human body -- are now being created
overseas, a concrete sign that American science is losing its preeminence
in a key field of 21st-century research.

Nearly three years ago, the Bush administration prohibited the use of
federal money to work with any embryonic cell lines created after Aug. 9,
2001, because of moral concerns over the destruction of human embryos. At
the time, the president said there would be more than 60 lines of these
cells available. But today there are only 19 usable lines created before
that date, and that number is never likely to rise above 23, according to
the National Institutes of Health.

However, the number of cell lines available to the world's researchers,
but off-limits to US government-funded researchers, is now much higher:
at least 51, according to the survey. It could rise to more than 100 over
the coming year. There are three new lines in Dvorak's lab, with four
more in progress. And there are also new lines in Sweden, Israel,
Finland, and South Korea. Last week, the world's first public bank of
embryonic stem cells opened in the United Kingdom, a country where there
are at least five new lines and more on the way.

''Science is like a stream of water, because it finds its way," said
Susan Fisher, a professor at the University of California at San
Francisco. ''And now it has found its way outside the United States."

At a time when reports show the United States is losing its dominance in
other areas of science, Fisher and many other researchers say they are
increasingly worried that America is not building a competitive
foundation in one of the most active areas of biological discovery. Many
scientists believe that embryonic stem-cell research has the potential to
yield profound insights into a range of afflictions, including
Parkinson's disease and diabetes, which affect millions of Americans. By
restricting American use of these cells, they say, the government is
effectively keeping them out of the hands of many top scientists -- both
slowing the pace of research that could lead to cures, and potentially
putting the country behind in technologies that could be major business
opportunities in the new century.

Included on the list of off-limits cell lines created since 2001 are some
cells that are easier to use and would be safer for patients than the
Bush-approved lines. Others are tailored for the study of particular
diseases.

Each cell line is a colony of cells derived from a single embryo, which
share the same DNA. One of the new cell lines has the common genetic
mutation underlying cystic fibrosis. This cell line, developed overseas
and not yet described in a scientific journal, could reveal the
biological underpinnings of a debilitating disease that affects some
30,000 Americans. The US government will not pay for scientists to grow
or study these cells because they were created recently.

The ballooning list of forbidden cell lines could add energy to a
rebellion over stem cell policy within the president's own Republican
Party. Thirty-six Republicans were among the 206 members of the House of
Representatives who signed a letter asking the president to reconsider
the ban. And two weeks ago, Nancy Reagan delivered an impassioned plea
for research that might one day prevent the horror of diseases like
Alzheimer's, which she said has taken former president Ronald Reagan ''to
a distant place where I can no longer reach him."

For most diseases, embryonic stem cell research is likely many years from
offering any help to patients. But it is becoming increasingly apparent
that if researchers begin to make medical progress, the US government --
which funds the vast majority of basic science research in this country
-- will be able to take little credit.

For many foreign scientists, the restrictions imposed on the world's
leading biomedical power represent an opportunity. Dvorak once used old
rum bottles as flasks in his underfunded lab. Now he is talking to a
professor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Ole Isacson, about collaborating
on research.

''He is swimming," said Isacson, whose lab at McLean Hospital is famous
for its research on Parkinson's disease. ''But for us, it is like trying
to swim on dry land."

* * * When human embryonic stem cells were first isolated, the
breakthrough happened in an American lab.

In November 1998, a team of researchers lead by biologist James Thomson
of the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced it had isolated human
embryonic stem cells and could grow them in a dish. Embryonic stem cells,
taken from a microscopic embryo in its first few days of development, are
in a sense the most primordial and powerful human cells, and can develop
into any part of the body.

The announcement created a sensation. It was clear these cells would be
an important new tool for studying human biology, and they also raised
the prospect that a wide range of diseases might be treated someday by
replacing a patient's damaged cells. Yet the work is also ethically
controversial, because growing stem cells requires destroying a human
embryo. This led critics to charge the practice amounted to taking human
lives and could not be justified no matter how great the potential
benefits.

In 2001, President Bush attempted to broker a compromise: In a nationally
televised speech, he said that federally funded research would be limited
to cell lines already in existence. He said that the more than 60 lines
already derived would be enough for researchers to continue their work
without using government money to destroy more embryos.

Although much basic biological research remains to be done on the cell
lines created before Aug. 9, 2001, it has become clear to American
scientists that the Bush policy has put them at a disadvantage compared
with many of their colleagues overseas. Human embryonic stem cells are
notoriously difficult to handle, and deriving each new line gives the
team in the laboratory a deeper understanding of stem-cell biology and
essential practical skills. Abroad, this work is exploding, while in the
United States only a handful of labs are able to do it.

''A lot of stem cell biology is like gardening," said Stephen Minger, who
isolated the cystic fibrosis cell line and is an American scientist who
now works at King's College London. ''Some people can grow orchids, and
some can't grow tomatoes."

Governments around the world are stepping into the gap, and a number are
emerging as powerhouses in the field.

In the United Kingdom, as in the United States, there has been
contentious public debate over embryonic cell research, but the
government has designed a system of strict oversight. With the opening
last week of the new UK Stem Cell Bank north of London, funded by the
government at $4.6 million over three years, that country is taking the
kind of international leadership role which in other fields has fallen to
the United States. The bank will accept cell lines that meet a set of
ethical standards, carefully study and grow them to ensure they are
scientifically useful, and then make them available to researchers.

''We see this as a truly international effort," said Glyn Stacey, the new
bank's director.

In Australia, the government is funding research and helping to set up a
national stem cell center. In the Czech Republic, Dvorak's lab at the
Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry is part of a Centre for
Cell Therapy and Tissue Repair, supported by the government. South Korea
has derived almost as many new lines of human embryonic stem cells as the
United States, according to the Globe survey, and researchers there were
the first to create stem cells from a cloned human embryo -- a scientific
milestone that American researchers grumble should have happened in the
United States.

* * * This rush of work overseas is yielding other important advances,
such as technology that could be key in turning the science of embryonic
stem cells into usable therapies. All of the cell lines on the US
government approved list are grown on a layer of mouse cells. These mouse
cells, called a ''feeder layer," sustain the human cells, but could also
transmit mouse-borne viruses, making them potentially dangerous for use
in humans.

Dvorak's laboratory has just begun working with human feeder cells
instead, a technique that could yield cells safe to transplant back into
humans. Already, laboratories in Singapore, Israel, Sweden, and Finland
have isolated lines of stem cells that don't need mouse feeder cells.
Only one American lab has done so: Susan Fisher's California lab, which
is barred from receiving federal funding and is supported in part by the
California-based biotech Geron Corp.

None of these lines, including Fisher's, can be used by government-funded
scientists in America. The result is that American scientists with
private funding are making advances that they can share freely with
scientists overseas, but which they cannot share with colleagues in their
own departments.

As much as the Bush rules have limited embryonic stem cell research, they
have prompted a substantial private effort to keep the research moving
forward. Harvard announced last month that it is building a privately
funded effort to do the work, and it has a fund-raising goal of $100
million. The University of California, San Francisco is already underway
with a similar effort, started with a $5 million gift from Intel's Andy
Grove, as are a number of other academic institutions. Earlier this
month, the governor of New Jersey signed an agreement opening the
nation's first state-funded stem cell institute.

Thanks partly to this effort, none of the researchers contacted by the
Globe said they had seen signs of a scientific ''brain drain" that some
critics predicted. But still they worry about the more subtle side
effects of the Bush policy. Many of the world's top disease specialists
work at universities in the United States, yet they are largely unable to
work on embryonic stem cells, and the universities are likely to have
more trouble recruiting talented foreign scientists interested in
embryonic stem cells.

At the same time, top American researchers who might otherwise jump into
the field are avoiding it because of the risks, scientists said. And some
worry that younger stem cell scientists, who don't have an established
lab to keep them in the United States, will move abroad, and perhaps stay
there.

''That is really something to keep an eye on," said John Gearhart, one of
the field's founders and a professor at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Gearhart
said that many of the younger scientists in his lab are interested in
pursuing further training abroad.

Yet there could be changes coming. Last weekend, the NIH issued a letter
hinting the White House may be open to changing its policy at some point.
The letter, written by NIH director Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, was a response
to a letter signed by 206 members of the House of Representatives. In it,
he acknowledges that ''from a purely scientific perspective more cell
lines may well speed some areas of human embryonic stem cell research."

US Representative Michael N. Castle, a Deleware Republican who helped
organize the House letter, said that it seems to represent a softening of
the White House stance. In Congress, he said, support for stem cell
research is increasing, and he added that he has been struck by the
degree to which some people change their minds when they meet with
patients who are suffering. ''There doesn't seem to be a lot of gray
area," Castle said. ''They become real advocates."

In the meantime, many scientists abroad are nearly giddy with the
possibilities the field now presents them. Dvorak and a colleague, Ales
Hampl, are preparing to come to Boston for a major conference next month,
organized by the International Society for Stem Cell Researchers. While
he is in Boston, Dvorak is going to make a presentation of his work at
Isacson's lab.

Because of federal restrictions in the United States, Isacson said that
he has been increasingly looking abroad for collaborators who are more
free, and Dvorak is one possibility.

Sitting in his modest Czech office, next to a fax machine that doubles as
his phone, Dvorak said that he is nervous about presenting at Harvard,
and has already had nightmares. After many years of laboring in
obscurity, a collaboration with Harvard would be a vindication for him,
but he struggles to find the words in English.

''It would be like being in heaven," suggested Hampl.

''Yes," said Dvorak, ''like being in heaven."

Gareth Cook can be reached at [log in to unmask]

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