WiCell Research Institute of Madison made an announcement Tuesday that may please opponents of stem cell research.
If it receives federal funding for embryonic stem cell lines that do not require the destruction of human embryos, it will partner with Advanced Cell Technology, a California-based biotechnology company, to distribute the cells through the National Stem Cell Bank.
Professor emeritus of cytogenics at UW-Madison Lorraine Meisner said political motives may account for this topic's recent presence in the news, as a way to circumvent some of the heated ethical issues at hand.
""This new research is partly to get around the current ban because it doesn't kill the embryo,"" Meisner said, referring to the lack of federal funding allocated to the kind of embryonic stem cell research that would destroy the embryo.
According to Meisner, stem cell firms have been doing research like this for years and that initiating an embryonic stem cell culture with a single cell—rather than simply performing stem cell research without destroying embryos—is the truly newsworthy technological advance.
According to Andy Kohn, spokesperson for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, there are still a lot of questions about the applicability of these stem cells and debate as to whether or not the national government will allow these cells to be eligible for federal funding.
Currently, scientists and citizens are petitioning President Bush and the Congress for these federal funds, according to Kohn.
Last week, gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Green Bay, announced he would supply $25 million in funds to WiCell to support their stem cell research, provided that federal funding is secured.
Green further expressed his support for the WiCell/ACT partnership in a press release Tuesday night.
Kohn said reactions are all over the map; for example, Bush said he would not allow federal funding for stem cell research, but many anti-abortion politicians are willing to support it.
Professor Meisner said she has mixed feelings on the issue as well. According to Meisner, every year, researchers discard 400,000 embryos that cannot be used, and often have to go through many stem cells through experimentation in order to find a ""normal"" one—a stem cell that would be stable and receptive to the ""single-cell extraction"" technology.
""I would rather have my stem cell used for the benefit of mankind than thrown in the garbage,"" she said.
ACT currently has a research license to study and use the stem cells provided by WiCell.
WiCell holds the patent on the stem cells themselves, but ACT has patented the new method of obtaining them. Therefore, the cells ACT creates under its own patent requires WiCell's patent as well.
