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South Korea to Supply Cloned Human Cells

Posted on: Wednesday, 19 October 2005, 12:01 CDT

By Gareth Cook, The Boston Globe

Oct. 19--South Korean scientists are organizing an international consortium, to include laboratories in California and Britain, that will clone human cells for American and other researchers who don't have access to the controversial stem cell technology.

The plan, to be announced today in South Korea, will probably accelerate the creation and use of cloned human embryonic stem cells, which many scientists see as a potent tool for understanding diseases and potentially finding treatments. But the plan is also likely to sharpen the political debate over cloning in this country, because it could mean that large numbers of American scientists may become involved in a technology that critics find morally objectionable. The plan will be funded in part by the South Korean government, making it a striking contrast to the policies of President Bush, who has barred federal funding for the creation of any new human embryonic stem cells.

The consortium plans to set up collaborations with fertility clinics and scientists in the United States and Britain, according to an article posted online today by the New England Journal of Medicine. Three South Korean technicians will fly periodically to the consortium's laboratories to carry out the procedure, and the resulting stem cells will be flown back to Seoul for analysis and then made available. When up and running, the article estimates, the consortium could become a kind of assembly line, making some 100 new batches of cloned embryonic stem cells a year -- a dramatic acceleration of the research.

The South Korean group -- headed by Hwang Woo Suk of Seoul National University, who also will lead the consortium -- are the only scientists in the world who have successfully created cloned human embryonic stem cells. Kevin Eggan, who is part of a team at Harvard University that plans to clone human cells, said that he and other scientists have been impressed with the openness of the Korean team, which has hosted scientists from around the world.

"I applaud this effort," Eggan said. "I hope it signals an expansion of their proven commitment to disseminating this technology to scientists around the world."

But several American stem cell scientists cautioned that the effort could be slow to start because of the litany of federal, state, and university regulations involved, as well as the difficult ethical issues, such as protecting the safety of women who donate eggs for use in cloning.

The scientists also raised another concern, saying it is important that American researchers learn the technique for themselves.

"This technology is still so early on that I question the wisdom of centralizing the technology," said Dr. Arnold Kriegstein, director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Tissue Biology at the University of California, San Francisco. "Like any other technology, it advances through innovation that occurs at multiple sites."

Cloning, which is known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, is a way of creating embryonic stem cells. Scientists are interested in such cells because they have the ability to become any cell in the body, making them a powerful tool for biological research. With nuclear transfer, scientists take a nucleus from a patient's cell, containing the patient's DNA, and place it into an egg cell that has had its own nucleus removed. This new cell is then stimulated to grow for several days and the stem cells are removed, destroying the embryo. The stem cells have the same DNA as the original patient.

By doing nuclear transfer with a cell from a patient with a disease, researchers can create stem cells that carry the genes for that disease, giving them a new way to study it. And, if embryonic stem cells are used to treat people in the future, nuclear transfer would allow researchers to create tissues that are genetically matched to a patient.

But the technology raises difficult ethical issues. Opponents of abortion oppose embryonic stem cell research because to create the cells researchers must destroy a human embryo -- which the critics say is the taking of a human life. With nuclear transfer, the criticism has been even sharper, because the researchers create an embryo specifically for the research and then destroy it, instead of using frozen embryos that would otherwise be discarded at fertility clinics. The embryos that are destroyed are typically around five days old, and are balls of several hundred cells.

Nuclear transfer has also generated concerns because women must donate eggs for the research to work, and the procedure carries some risk to the donor. Egg donation is a commonly used procedure at fertility clinics, and complications are thought to be rare, scientists say.

In California, the egg donations will be handled by the Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco, according to Dr. Philip E. Chenette, a doctor there. The clinic, which is privately run, will provide its services at cost, he said. If the research is done in California, it could be eligible for funding from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which was established after a ballot measure authorized the state to raise up to $3 billion for stem cell research. The institute is not setting up a formal relationship with the new consortium, according to its president, Zach W. Hall.

The most immediate scientific impact of the consortium would be to generate batches, or lines, of stem cells that have the DNA of patients with diseases. These could be a vital tool for researchers studying particular diseases. The scientists could observe the "disease lines" as they develop into different tissues and see whether they have trouble at particular stages of development. The disease lines could also be used to test potential drugs, Eggan said. In the spring, Hwang's team announced that it had created lines for two diseases, juvenile diabetes and an inherited blood disorder called congenital hypogammaglobulinemia.

Although no other scientists have matched the South Koreans, there are two teams in the United States, both affiliated with Harvard University, that have applied for permission to do nuclear transfer experiments at their institutions. Kriegstein said that scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, are also preparing to do nuclear transfer work, though the facilities are not ready, and they do not have the university's permission to do the work yet.

Current federal rules prevent scientists working in federally funded laboratories from working with human embryonic stem cells created after Aug. 9, 2001, so any cells created by the consortium would be off-limits in this country except for scientists working in privately funded laboratories. The consortium has not determined the prices it will charge for its services, according to the journal article.

The South Korean prime minister is scheduled to speak at the announcement in Seoul, according to a program for the event.

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Source: The Boston Globe

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