|
Stem Cell Bank to have Half of Lines Available for Federal Funds
Associated Press Newswires
03 October 2005
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - The nation's first bank of embryonic stem cells will initially distribute half of the cell lines available for use in federally funded studies, officials said Monday.
The National Institutes of Health awarded a four-year, $16 million contract to the WiCell Research Institute, a nonprofit that supports embryonic stem cell research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to run the bank.
The bank already has the right to distribute five lines developed at UW-Madison and has an agreement to distribute six lines held by Australian-based ES Cell International to U.S. researchers, said Carl Gulbrandsen, president of WiCell's board of directors.
WiCell is trying to reach similar deals for the 11 other lines available for federal funding under Bush Administration policy, he said. Those lines are in California, Georgia, Sweden, Korea and Israel.
The bank has no way to compel those labs to turn over their cells, Gulbrandsen said.
The bank will store and distribute the cells under NIH's plan to make it cheaper for scientists to gain access to them and to ensure their quality.
Derek Hei, the UW-Madison scientist who helped land the contract, said he did not know what other schools UW-Madison beat to get the deal.
Gov. Jim Doyle and UW-Madison officials said the contract cements the school's position as a leader in stem cell research. Researcher Jamie Thomson became the first scientist to isolate embryonic stem cells in 1998 at UW-Madison.
In 2001, President Bush limited federal grant funding to projects involving lines of embryonic stem cells that already were in existence, saying taxpayer dollars should not fund the destruction of human embryos.
|
