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Stem cell bank opens its first branch in Korea

A bank that will create and supply new lines of embryonic stem cells for scientists around the world opened in Seoul yesterday as part of a global partnership in the field.

Led by cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-suk, the World Stem Cell Hub will serve as the main center in the international consortium, which includes the US and Britain. It aims at accelerating research into embryonic stem cells that scientists someday hope to use to replace and repair diseased and damaged parts of the body.

Official backing

Underscoring South Korea's strong official backing of the project, President Roh Moo-hyun made an appearance at the opening ceremony. South Korea bans cloning for reproductive reasons but provides full support for scientists doing it for medical research.

"A tremendous thing is happening here," Roh said. "It's the politicians' role to deal properly with the controversy over life ethics so that it cannot block scientific research and progress."

The South Korean government gave 24.5 billion won (US$24.4 million) in assistance to Hwang's team at Seoul National University this year. Hwang will also receive as much as 3 billion won (US$3 million) in annual government funding until 2009.

"When the use of these stem cells is limited to a particular country, it takes too long to create technologies usable for the whole of humanity," Hwang said.

"By creating a global network, we plan to share stem cells created in each country and share information," said Hwang, who has received world recognition for cloning the world's first human embryos and extracting stem cells.

In May, Hwang announced he had created the world's first embryonic stem cells that genetically match injured or sick patients -- a major step in the quest to grow patients' own replacement tissue to treat diseases.

The Seoul-based stem cell bank is expected to help scientists from countries like the US get around government restrictions, which often involves destroying the days-old embryos harboring them. The administration of US President George W. Bush bans federal funding for research on all but a handful of old embryonic stem-cell lines.

The first branches of the stem cell bank will open in Britain and the US, Hwang said.

Replacement tissue

Many scientists are aching to accelerate research on embryonic stem cells, which can grow into all the other tissues in the body. The cells are seen as a potential source of replacement tissue for people with a variety of ailments.

Instead of using embryos left over from in vitro fertilization, the Koreans create them from cloned skin cells. That process is favored by some scientists because cloning can create a perfect tissue match for sick patients. But critics say it condones creating human life for research.

The Korean-led consortium hopes to create about 100 cell lines per year with genetic defects that cause such diseases as diabetes, AIDS, Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's and sickle cell anemia, according to experts familiar with the project.
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