Embryonic stem cell cloner looking for partners

By: BRADLEY J. FIKES - Staff Writer | Friday, January 18, 2008 11:21 PM PST ∞

LA JOLLA -- Stemagen Corp, the biotech company whose announcement that it has cloned human embryos garnered worldwide attention, is looking for partners.

The La Jolla startup wants to collaborate with other companies or research institutions to turn human embryonic stem cells into stable sources, or "lines" of transplantable cells, said Andrew French, the company's chief scientific officer.

Stemagen reported this week that it has succeeded in growing embryos from human egg cells which had their own nucleus removed and replaced with a nucleus from a donor's skin cells. These days-old embryos contain human embryonic stem cells, the ancestral cells that mature into the hundreds of cell types in the human body.

Stemagen's results were published in the Jan. 17 issue of the scientific journal Stem Cells. The egg cells were excess cells, donated by women who were undergoing in-vitro fertilization at the Reproductive Sciences Center in La Jolla.

The challenge now is to coax the embryonic stem cells into becoming the desired kind of mature cells that could be used to replace diseased or injured cells in patients, French said. These include diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and muscular dystrophy.

Stemagen, which has eight employees, is looking for partners or grants, such as from California's own stem cell research program, French said. That program, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, has begun accepting grant applications from for-profit companies.

"We're considering all avenues," French said. "We haven't specifically targeted (the institute) at this point in time."

Stemagen has a connection to the institute -- its new president, Alan Trounson, is a friend of French. Both were scientists at the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development in Victoria, Australia.

The California program was established in 2004 to fund research into stem cells as therapy. It stresses research with embryonic stem cells, which many scientists think have more promise than other forms of stem cells.

However, some people and organizations object to working with human embryos because they believe these embryos, destroyed to get the stem cells, are human individuals. The Vatican has condemned Stemagen's feat.

Another American biotech company, Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Mass., announced Jan. 10 it had created embryonic stem cell lines from human embryos without destroying the embryos.

The main difference between embryonic and non-embryonic stem cells, such as those found in umbilical cord blood, is that embryonic stem cells appear to be more readily formed into different types of cells. However, recent announcements of progress with non-embryonic stem cell approaches have called this reasoning into question.

For example, Oceanside's International Stem Cell Corp. said it has turned unfertilized, or parthenogenic, egg cells into corneal tissue. These cells, not taken from embryos, might sidestep the religious objections. However, these cells must still be genetically matched to the recipient, as is done now with organ transplants, or the transplant might be rejected.

The process used by Stemagen could take care of the rejection problem. If the donor nucleus came from the patient, the resulting cells would have almost the same genetic makeup as the patient's, and scientists expect they would be accepted by the body. However, if the patient suffers from a genetic disease, the cells would presumably have the same disease, so their usefulness is questionable.

French said the company is open for discussion about which disease target should be tackled first.

"These cells are known to differentiate into the 200-plus cells in the body, and I hope that people can do it for all these cell types," French said. "I don't have a preference there. There are so many debilitating diseases out there that I hope people are working on each of them, and we can provide cells for them."

Contact staff writer Bradley J. Fikes at (760) 739-6641 or bfikes@nctimes.com.

First name only. Comments including last names, contact addresses, e-mail addresses or phone numbers will be deleted. Attempts to misrepresent your identity or impersonate any person will not be approved. All comments are screened before they appear online, so please keep them brief. Comments reflect the views of those commenting and not necessarily those of the North County Times or its staff writers. Click here to view additional comment policies.