Linda
Thank you for that article it does provide hope.
                                             Sincerely Chris
At 11:19 PM 5/26/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>FROM:   The Boston Globe
>May 23, 2004, Sunday ,THIRD EDITION
>
>HEADLINE: 94 NEW CELL LINES CREATED ABROAD SINCE BUSH DECISION
>
>  BY GARETH COOK
>
>    In its survey of laboratories around the world, the Globe found 128
>lines of
>human embryonic stem cells created since Aug. 9, 2001, the day new cell
>lines
>became ineligible for federal research money.
>
>       Of those cell lines, 94 were created abroad, and 34 were created in
>the
>United States. Under current policy, all of these new cell lines are
>off-limits
>to US laboratories that receive federal funding.
>
>
>            Fifty-one of these new lines are available to researchers
>today.
>There are several reasons the other lines are not yet available for
>research.
>
>    When biologists first derive a line of embryonic stem cells, they must
>carefully study it a process called characterization and also grow it
>long
>enough to be sure the cells are viable. In the Czech lab of Petr Dvorak,
>for
>example, there are three lines that are well-characterized and have been
>growing
>for a year. The lab has derived another four lines, but those have not
>been
>studied well enough for Dvorak to be confident they could be used by
>other
>research teams. And one line that initially looked promising died, a
>common
>experience with very young lines.
>
>       There can also be legal issues. In the United Kingdom, for example,
>the
>survey found five well-characterized lines, but these cannot be shipped
>abroad
>until the newly opened UK Stem Cell Bank has processed them.
>
>       There are also lines in other countries, such as Japan, where
>researchers
>are not allowed to ship the cells abroad. These lines were not included
>in the
>survey, because it is not clear whether they will ever be available to
>researchers here.
>
>       Of the 128 lines found in the Globe survey, then, many are likely
>to
>become available to researchers in the United States though only if those
>researchers raise private money and build separate laboratories.
>
>    Currently there is no organization that systematically tracks all of
>the
>world's human embryonic stem cell lines, meaning that even specialists do
>not
>have a clear picture of the state of the field.
>
>    Peter Andrews, a professor at University of Sheffield in Great
>Britain, is
>currently heading an effort to catalog and systematically characterize
>all of
>the world's embryonic stem cell lines, as part of an organization called
>the
>International Stem Cell Forum.
>
>    He hopes to have an initial set of results by the end of the year, he
>said.
>
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