Britain opens stem-cell bank

Scientists say it could change modern medicine. Opponents dismiss it as playing God, the ethical equivalent of Nazi death-camp experiments.

Stem-cell research - which involves exploring the use of cells as possible therapies for a range of diseases - is nothing if not contentious, and this week Britain moved into the heart of the controversy by setting up the world's first "bank" for storing and distributing the tiny fragments of proto-life.

The idea is to provide a repository for these scientifically valuable stem cells that researchers the world over can "withdraw" and use without having to go through the scientific and legal hurdles of generating their own.

The UK Stem Cell bank, based at a facility just north of London, could help accelerate therapies for a wide range of genetic disorders and regenerative treatments. The bank, set up with $4.6 million of state money, will position Britain at the forefront of the science, capitalizing on its long history of pioneering work in genetics and its robust legal, regulatory, secular, and institutional framework.

But opponents say the process of creating embryos only to exploit them for therapeutic purposes is abhorrent. "We believe evil should never be done even though good may come of it," says Josephine Quintavalle of the ProLife Alliance in London. "Plenty of good [scientific] ideas came from the extermination of victims of Nazi concentration camps."

Stem-cell research involves harvesting embryos within the first two weeks of their creation, when young cells have the potential to develop into any organ. Researchers hope to use the cells both to "grow" replacement organs and identify genetic imperfections that lead to illnesses like Huntington's disease or Alzheimer's. Most embryos harvested in this fashion are "spare" matter from in vitro fertilization (IVF) programs.

But the process of producing stem cells is so laborious and time-consuming that only a few dozen "lines" exist in the world at the moment.

The bank, based at Britain's National Institute for Biological Standards and Controls, will make this highly limited resource much more widely available, by culturing the stem-cell lines "deposited" by researchers and systematically distributing them to licensed scientists around the world.

"What's important is that there are so few high-quality stem-cell lines available in the world," says Stephen Minger, director of the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory at the Centre for Neuroscience Research, King's College, London.

"Part of the problem is growing these cells," says Dr. Minger, whose lab has produced one stem cell from around 80 embryos. "It's difficult, time-consuming, and labor-intensive."

Since scientists will be able, through the bank, to "share" stem cells, it will reduce dramatically the number of embryos required. It will also facilitate a comparison of results. "It's opening up the potential of working on stem cells to a vastly larger group of scientists," says Alf Game, head of genetics at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, a government agency that helped set up the bank.

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