It will take more than funding to help America catch up in stem cell research.
The existing maze of rules about federal stem cell funding ties the hands of major research institutions, which rely on funds from multiple sources, those involved in the process say.
“We can?t share technology or cell lines with other researchers in the same lab,” said Valina Dawson, a neuroscience researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “This means we can?t collaborate with one another. We have to purchase everything twice.
“We?re trying to make the discoveries as quickly as possible so we can get them into the patient as soon as possible, and we?re also trying to be frugal and make the best use of our funding,” she said.
Patent issues also put the brakes on innovation.
Currently, there is a three-year timeline to get a patent approved, said Chi Dang, research leader at Hopkins. “Those organizations that are trying to start their own stem cell lines, as we are, are seriously limited by the inability to patent. Why go do all the work if someone can just steal it?” he said.
Hopkins has 35 applications pending patent approval.
Issues with the existing stem cell stock “approved” by the Bush administration is the final nail in the research coffin, scientists said.
“We?re greatly limited in that the existing stem cell lines are largely defective,” said Jeffrey Rothstein, director of the Robert Packard Center for ALS Research at Hopkins. “Most of us in the field believe we do need all new cells and better purified cells.”
Rothstein is looking for treatments for Lou Gehrig?s disease, though, he said, it would take years before stem cell therapies become a reality.
The more immediate gains can be made in drug research, using human stem cells to determine whether drug candidates would have the desired effect, he said.
Current models using animal tissue result in a success rate of about one in 13 drug candidates making it to market, with each failure carrying six- and seven-figure price tags, he said. “Rat genes are not our genes, so I may think I have a drug, but I don?t know if I have a human drug.”
