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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