Yahoo! News Story - Singapore Scientists Find Door to Safer Stem Cells

August 7, 2002

Bill Werre (b.werre@...) has sent you a news article

Personal message:

Interesting article about pro's and con's as well as a new substrate to grow the cells as older methods used animal tissue. Note that this will not work for any of the present stem cell lines in the USA as all of them were grown on mouse tissue. Take Care, Bill Werre

Singapore Scientists Find Door to Safer Stem Cells

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020807/sc_nm/science_singapore_cells_dc_1

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Singapore Scientists Find Door to Safer Stem Cells

Wed Aug 7, 9:05 AM ET

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore scientists say they have

found a way to grow human embryonic stem cells without the use

of animal tissue, paving the way for safer, more plentiful stem

cells and opening the door to cell transplants.

The research on using human tissue for growing stem cells

appeared in the online version of the journal of Nature

Biotechnology Monday.

Rights to the research are held by the Singapore-funded,

Australia-based firm ES Cell International (ESI), which has

filed for a global patent.

Embryonic stem cell research has caused a raging ethical

debate internationally as it involves destroying embryos to

extract master cells that scientists believe can provide repair

kits for cells damaged by incurable diseases and trauma.

Stem cells are currently grown on mouse tissue, which acts

as soil or feeder, and nourished with a liquid derived from

cows and pigs.

"This was potentially hazardous. You run the risk of ...

animal pathogens being transmitted from the mouse feeder to the

human cell because they are in direct contact," Ariff Bongso,

research professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology with the

National University of Singapore, told Reuters on Wednesday.

After 20 months of research, Bongso, who is credited with

isolating stem cells from human embryos eight years ago, has

now grown stem cells on a feeder made of human tissue and

nourished with liquid derived from blood and plasma.

"We have the world's first cell line grown in a totally

animal-free system," he said.

The use of human tissue to grow stem cells was superior to

the mouse tissue as it eliminated the risk of contamination

from animal cells, and provided a consistent crop of cells.

Growing stem cells on mouse tissue often had erratic results,

Bongso said.

Scientists can also take advantage of the longer period

during which the cells exist as stem cells, before turning into

other cells, when grown on human tissue, he said.

Stems cells grown on human tissue stay stem cells for nine

days, while those grown on mouse cells grow into other types of

cells after seven days.

Uncontaminated by animal tissue, the human feeder stem

cells could form the basis for growing specific cell types,

such as heart or nerve cells, which can be transplanted into

humans.

"We've brought it closer to the point of clinical

application," Bongso said.

But clinical trials were at least five years away, he said.

"There's a lot more that we need to learn from these

cells," Bongso said. "It needs a very fancy, very fastidious

environment to continue its growth."

To quell some of the ethical discomfort of using stem cells

in research, the United States has issued an official list of

close to 80 human embryonic stem cell lines eligible for

funding.

All the approved cell lines were grown on mouse feeders and

the United States may have to reconsider the registration of

cell lines after the release of the new research, Bongso said.

ESI owns six U.S.-approved mouse feeder stem cell lines and

plans to develop at least another 10 new cell lines using the

human feeder, said Bongso who is the firm's founding scientist.

An ESI spokeswoman told Reuters the firm planned to sell

and license the new human feeder cell lines.

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