Word: celling
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Progress will certainly accelerate as more stem-cell lines are added to the government registry. A larger pool of available stem cells is a more accurate reflection not only of the diversity of the population but also of the variety of forms that treatable diseases can take. That translates into more opportunities for researchers to study basic human development and disease development, screen new drugs for their effectiveness against disease and create entirely new therapies. The ultimate goal is to use stem cells, which can morph into any of the body's hundreds of different cell types, to cure disease...
...newly approved lines, 11 came from the lab of Dr. George Daley, director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Children's Hospital Boston and a member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute; the other two came from Dr. Ali Brivanlou, an embryologist at Rockefeller University. Daley's submission for NIH review was 130 pages long, he says, including a 16-page informed-consent document signed by each of the donors of the embryos from which the stem-cell lines were derived, ensuring that the donors were aware of where their embryos were going and what they would be used...
That kind of meticulousness probably helped expedite the NIH's approval of the new lines, a process that involves applying a checklist of criteria spelled out by the agency and providing documentation that the cells meet all of the requirements exactly. This review, says Collins, boils down to NIH staff agreeing that all the necessary criteria for inclusion have been met. Approval of some lines may be less straightforward if certain requirements have not been met to the letter. For instance, since stem-cell lines are drawn from unused embryos donated to research by couples undergoing the IVF procedure, researchers...
Some experts worry that the stringent vetting and documentation processes may place an undue burden on labs that have painstakingly created human-embryonic-stem-cell lines using their own hard-earned private funds. (Researchers are still prohibited from using federal money to create new stem-cell lines because of a congressional ban on harming or destroying embryos.) According to some estimates, as many as 780 such lines may exist worldwide, but not all labs may be willing to subject themselves to the scrutiny and administrative hassle of registering their lines with the NIH. Even among the handful of stem-cell...
...many cases, researchers studying existing stem-cell lines do so free of any monetary strings, which means they are also entitled to any potential commercial windfall that may come from the application of the cells to a treatment or therapy. "Any discoveries they make using the lines will be theirs," says Amy Wilkerson, associate vice president for research support at Rockefeller University, who oversaw the submission of the university's lines...