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FROM:
Minnesota Daily
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June 22, 2005


U, Belgium form stem cell partnership
By Jerret Raffety
The University’s stem cell research became an international affair
Thursday at the McGuire Translational Research Facility.

Leaders from the University and the Catholic University of Leuven in
Belgium signed a ceremonial agreement to develop joint and collaborating
stem cell institutes.

The agreement will allow for research and academic collaboration between
the two universities, including exchange of faculty members and students,
joint research projects and conferences.

The two universities will collaborate on any and potentially all stem
cell research the University of Minnesota’s Stem Cell Institute is
involved in, including studies that could affect health hazards such as
Parkinson’s disease, liver disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

Frank Cerra, senior vice president at the Academic Health Center, said
international collaboration is essential for stem cell research in a
speech at the agreement signing.

“Today is a really historic day, when we inaugurate through the symbol of
signing, an affiliation agreement between two major universities with a
very strong interest in health sciences,” Cerra said.

“If you don’t think you can be number one, you won’t — one of the ways we
need to get underway to do that is international partnerships between
universities of similar or greater stature,” he said.

Dr. Catherine Verfaillie, director of the University’s Stem Cell
Institute, said the student and faculty exchange part of the
collaboration is still in the planning stages.

She said an important part of the collaboration is to familiarize faculty
members and students at both universities with one another.

“One of the things you want to do very quickly is to bring scientists
there and some Belgians here to get familiar,” Verfaillie said.

Currently, the collaboration will mainly be in stem cell research, but
there have been talks of collaborating on related research such as
immunology and medical imaging, she said. Medical imaging is useful to
stem cell research because it allows researchers to track the progress of
stem cells, Verfaillie said.

“If you put stem cells in, you want to figure where they go and whether
they become what we want them to become without having to biopsy the
whole time,” she said.

The collaboration could include coursework for students from both
universities and mentor programs for graduate students in the future,
Verfaillie said.

Dr. Marc Boogaerts, vice dean of clinical affairs at the University of
Leuven, said stem cell research is critical to the future of medical
treatments.

“I think stem cells will change the whole field of medicine because we’re
moving to regenerative medicine instead of transplanting new organs — we
will use tissues and cells made by the stem cells,” Boogaerts said.

He said collaboration will lead to a critical mass of scientists put
together. Stem cell research is too broad for one university to research
all areas involved, Boogaerts said.

“Exchange of information is of the utmost importance in present day
medicine … By talking to people you will gain time, without a doubt,”
Boogaerts said. “(The) universities will bundle their efforts — what we
will do in Leuven they don’t necessarily have to repeat in Minneapolis
because they will get our results immediately and vice versa.”

He also said the collaboration will allow researchers to form
interpersonal networks for more research.

“We want an exchange of students and young people going both ways over
the ocean, talking to each other and forming the networks for the
future,” Boogaerts said. “That’s what we need.”

  http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2005/06/22/64685

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