Controversies dissuade stem cell researchers, says NIH director

Dr Wendy Baldwin, deputy director for extramural research at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), warned delegates at a stem cell conference in Melbourne yesterday that the high level of attention being paid to the controversial research was making it difficult to attract scientists to work in the field.

But she said that the use of stem cells in developing therapies for human diseases was not the only benefit to be gained from the technology.

"It's important not to lose sight of the fact that stem cells will give us a phenomenal tool to understand the development of tissues and organs," she said.

Important intellectual questions, such as how many cell lines were required for research, should not prevent the research from happening, she said.

"There is a passion that goes with this that encourages our scientists and administrators to work so hard, and that should not be lost among all of this," Baldwin said.

She outlined the NIH response to US President George Bush's decision of last year, that research would be funded if it used existing embryonic stem cell lines or lines that were in the process of being derived from embryos before his announcement at 9pm on the 9th of August, 2001.

At the heart of the Bush decision was a push to ensure that researchers knew which embryonic cell lines were available for NIH-funded research, she said.

Cell lines at Australian companies BresaGen and ES Cell International were among the 14 eligible sources of cell lines listed.

Baldwin said the NIH hoped there were about 80 cell lines that would be available for US publicly funded researchers, but many of the lines were still undergoing characterisation studies.

She said that discussion in the US currently centred on the number of cell lines currently available and their suitability for research.

"We want to track the use of the cell lines so that if necessary we can make an informed decision on whether more are needed," she said.