Hello All --
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is funding some interesting research.
While to our knowledge it is not focused specifically on PD, apparently
there are a lot of crossover applications that could be useful.  Perhaps
they COULD help to fund some PD research?

www.hhmi.org

Ted and Carole




----- Original Message -----
From: "Linda J Herman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2004 9:18 AM
Subject: Fw: US stem cell research lagging


> 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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