House to Vote on Stem-Cell Bill

By David Wahlberg, The Wisconsin State Journal

Jan. 11–To UW-Madison stem-cell scientist Clive Svendsen, a bill the U.S. House of Representative is set to vote on today would allow him to study more diseases.

To Beth Donley, the bill to lift restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research would reduce expenses at her new stem-cell company in Madison.

To James Thomson, the bill would mean the country has gotten over the ethical quandary he ignited when he first isolated the cells here nine years ago.

To patients with diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, spinal-cord injury and other conditions, the bill could speed up cures.

But it’s uncertain if the House, which is expected to approve the bill today, has enough support to override an anticipated veto by President Bush. The House failed to override his veto of the same bill last year, but Democrats have since gained control of the House and the Senate.

Anti-abortion groups, including Wisconsin Right to Life and Pro-Life Wisconsin, are again urging House members to vote no. They oppose the research because obtaining the cells requires the destruction of early- stage embryos otherwise discarded at fertility clinics.

Currently, federal money is available for 21 stem-cell lines — including five created by Thomson — that existed before 2001. That’s when Bush announced his policy forbidding federal money for studies on new cell lines.

The bill would lift that ban. It would allow federal grants to be used on many of the 227 or so other cell lines that have been created around the world, mostly with private funding.

The money could also be spent on cell lines not yet created, if private funding is first used to establish the cell lines from embryos.

Written consent from embryo donors would be required. The bill doesn’t specify where the funding would come from or how much would be allocated.

Stem-cell scientists and entrepreneurs in Madison, a national hub for the research, say the bill would usher in a new era in a field that has been hindered by access to a limited range of cells.

Stem cells, believed to be capable of becoming any of the body’s 220 cell types, could yield cell therapies, improve drug testing and enable a better understanding of diseases and human development, scientists say.

But the cell lines now available for public funding were grown with animal products and represent little genetic diversity, which could impede their clinical potential.

The bill before Congress “would be a huge boost. It would bring much more diversity to the field,” Svendsen said.

In his lab at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center, Svendsen uses some of the cells Thomson created to study Parkinson’s, a neurological disease that causes tremors and limits movement.

Svendsen coaxes the cells into a certain kind of brain cell. Then he inserts a mutation that kills those cells like Parkinson’s does. He hopes to find drugs to block that cell death.

Stem-cell lines already exist that carry mutations for other inherited neurological diseases — such as Huntington’s, in which people gradually lose mental and physical abilities.

Svendsen said he would like to study those cells, which aren’t among the 21 approved lines, but can’t because his lab is federally funded.

“It would be really nice to get cells with genetic deficiencies in them such as Huntington’s or Down syndrome,” he said. “None of the lines that have those are on the approved list.”

To Donley, an attorney who recently started the company Stemina Biomarker Discovery with UW-Madison researcher Gabriella Cezar, the bill would remove the need to do privately funded research in a separate facility from federally funded research.

Building two facilities and setting up two accounting processes as some researchers now do is costly, especially for a startup company, Donley said.

The bill “would make our world a lot less complicated and expensive,” she said.

Thomson said his two stem- cell companies in Madison — Cellular Dynamics and Stem Cell Products — might use some of the cells the bill would make more widely available.

But the legislation’s biggest benefit would be symbolic, he said. Adopting it would mean the country has moved beyond viewing stem cells as controversial. That would encourage more young scientists to enter the field, he said.

“There’s a certain sex appeal to stem cells, but there’s also a certain stigma,” he said. “By removing these restrictions, it would just become normal science.”

The bill would also likely mean that Thomson’s five stem-cell lines, now used in much of the stem-cell research conducted worldwide, could become less prominent, he acknowledged.

Thompson, who has also created two stem cell lines not approved for federal funding, said he’s not worried about that.

“They’ll always be the first,” he said. “They have dominated the field. They don’t need to do that in the future.”

Patents on Thomson’s cells are held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the university’s tech-transfer organization. The patents have brought in millions in licensing fees.

If the bill is approved, the patents would continue to bring in revenue, said Andy Cohn, spokesman for WARF.

The patents, which are being re-examined by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office at the request of a California watchdog group, essentially cover all stem-cell research, including the methods used to grow the cells. Researchers and companies wanting to commercialize most discoveries must purchase a license from WARF, Cohn said.

“If people are going to use other lines, that’s good for the science and it’s good for WARF,” he said. “Hopefully there will be discoveries made with those lines. Our patents will cover those discoveries, and we’ll make money.”

But the fact that the bill doesn’t allocate additional federal money for the research could minimize its impact, said Terry Devitt, spokesman for stem-cell research issues at UW-Madison.

Last year, the National Institutes of Health made $200 million available for adult stem- cell research and $38 million for studies involving the 21 embryonic stem-cell lines.

“You can have access to all the embryos in the world,” Devitt said, “but if you don’t have money to do the research, it’s not going to help a lot.”

Devitt said Wisconsin should consider directly funding stem- cell research, as California, New Jersey and other states are doing.

Matt Canter, spokesman for Gov. Jim Doyle, said that is not on the governor’s agenda.

Canter noted, however, that Doyle helped authorize $50 million in state funding for the university’s planned Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, which will include stem-cell research.

Doyle also started a $5 million plan to recruit and retain stem-cell companies; $3 million has gone to Thomson’s companies. The state and WARF agreed last year to wave royalty fees for companies that conduct stem-cell research in Wisconsin.

“There are a number of things we’re doing that are more effective” than directly funding the research, Canter said.

Meanwhile, anti-abortion groups are lobbying Congress to oppose the federal bill.

“Our government should not be funding the kind of research that involves the deliberate destruction of human life,” Susan Armacost, a legislative director for Wisconsin Right to Life, said in a prepared statement.

Added Peggy Hamill, state director of Pro-Life Wisconsin: “Forcing taxpayers to fund it is especially offensive.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Wisconsin State Journal

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