The WiCell Research Institute, announced the addition of two new stem cell lines Tuesday, in an effort to bring all 22 National Institutes of Health-approved stem cell lines into one internationally accessible database.
WiCell, the non-profit UW-Madison organization housing the National Stem Cell Bank, is collaborating with the University of California-San Francisco to include UCSF lines in the bank for distribution.
Executive Director of WiCell Elizabeth Donley said WiCell, now holding 13 lines, including the two in collaboration with UCSF, is negotiating with Celartis, a Swedish company holding two of the lines, and Novocell, a Georgia-based company, which has three.
Donley said negotiations are going well and WiCell expects to receive those lines within the next few months, bringing 18 of the 22 NIH-approved lines into the Bank. Twenty-one of the 22 lines are approved for federal funding.
The other four lines are under control by Israeli company Technicon, but WiCell has not initiated negotiations, primarily because of the conflicts with Lebanon over the past months.
Donley said organizations and academic institutions are usually willing to add cells to the Bank, as long as they reach distribution agreements and accept descriptions of how cells will be cultured.
She cited an immediate benefit to concentrating all lines in one location.
""Hopefully, in the future, all of the stem cells become cultured under the same condition,"" she said. ""So, when scientists start the process of their experiments, they know that all of their cells are starting in the same place.""
Donley said UW-Madison will also benefit because stem cells will be more easily accessible to researchers on campus and further stem cell work will boost its reputation as a research university.
According to Donley, there is not much competition for Wisconsin from other states, considering Wisconsin has been doing cell research longer and has distributed more lines—more than 420—than any other state.
""The National Stem Cell Bank helps keep Wisconsin at the center of stem cell research in the United States and even in the world,"" she said.
Life sciences communication and journalism professor Dietram Scheufele said federal funding favors Wisconsin because stem cell lines here are within guidelines set forth by the Bush administration.
However, Scheufele pointed out that private colleges are actively engaging in fundraising, and individual states have proposed state initiatives to support stem cell research, which poses a possible future threat to Wisconsin's position as leader in the field.
""What we will be seeing, eventually, is that places like Harvard and other private schools and places like California will begin to spend significant amounts of private money in order to not have to rely on those federal funding guidelines that have favored Wisconsin,"" he said.
Scheufele also said at the latest, Wisconsin could be surpassed in 2008, when a new federal administration comes to office and funding guidelines change.
According to Derek Hei, technical director of UW-Madison's Waisman Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility and leader of the bank, the acquisition of these new lines and potential of receiving lines from other sources benefit researchers worldwide.
""As we get more cell lines, we're going to help people do a better job of understanding the science and potentially getting these into the clinic where there can really help people,"" Hei said.
