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February 8, 2006 - BioWorld Today
International Symposium On Stem Cell
Collaboration.
Despite Setbacks, Scandals, Stem Cell Work Stays
Strong
by Randall Osborne
West Coast Editor
SAN FRANCISCO - "Risk and uncertainty combined
with powerful promise on an international scale"
might be the most concise way to summarize the
message from the International Symposium on Stem
Cell Collaboration, which, during a single day,
managed to bring together a variety of experts.
Held at the Mission Bay Conference Center at the
University of California at San Francisco, the
event featured as a guest speaker by video Roger
Pedersen, formerly of UCSF, where his work in
genetics - begun in 1971 and lasting three
decades - led him into studies of human embryos
and stem cells.
Pedersen, now the director of the Centre for
Stem Cell Biology and Medicine at the University
of Cambridge, UK, was hardly the only speaker to
mention "the sad story emerging from Korea" for
months now, a reference to data faked by
researcher Woo Suk Hwang and his team to support
the claim that they had cloned human embryos to
provide embryonic stem cell lines. (See BioWorld
Today, Jan. 11, 2006.)
But Pedersen also echoed the hope expressed by
others at the conference, a hope that cuts
across national borders, even as he explained
his departure from U.S. academia with a
country-specific reason.
"At the moment that I left UCSF for Cambridge,
the U.S. government was in fact not providing
any support for embryonic stem cell research,"
he said. "If you will, it was like being in a
business with one customer, that being the state
of California," which was funding his work
through its BioStart program, with a private
sponsor in Menlo Park, Calif.-based Geron Corp.
"Had that funding ceased for any reason
whatsoever, I and all of the employees in my
laboratory would have ceased to have careers,
more or less overnight," he said, so the move
overseas became a business decision. The money
situation since has changed, Pedersen noted, and
his efforts at Cambridge have yielded more
diversified funding, even receiving as much as
$30 million from the U.S.
One member of the audience asked what it would
take for the widely missed Pedersen to return.
"I don't really feel I left because I can visit
you like this," he said, gesturing to the video
camera. "Don't try too hard [to get me back],"
he added, and pointed to the importance of an
international push.
Pedersen called for an exchange program that
would let "the brilliant young scientists from
California visit other laboratories. Something
like the Rhodes scholarships, for example, or
the Gates scholarships," offered by Oxford and
Cambridge, respectively.
Researchers checking out other labs would
"enable California to tap into the progress
that's being made quite rapidly now at other
places." He urged the state, meanwhile, to forge
ahead with government-funded stem cell work.
For his part, Pedersen seemed ready to stay put.
"I feel I'm able to accomplish a great deal by
working here in the UK, perhaps even more than
if I were in San Francisco," he said, though the
environment in which he operates now is "highly
restrictive. This is something that is not
[well] appreciated outside the UK. The
regulatory environment is perhaps the strictest
one in the world."
In order to get the go-ahead for research on
embryos, such as making an embryonic stem cell
line, a scientist must apply to the Human
Fertilization and Embryology Authority, he said,
and failure to comply with terms dictated by the
HFEA can mean prison.
Wherever in the world they happen to be,
remarked Jeff Newman as he introduced a panel
discussion, people working with stem cells
represent "those among us who are compelled to
create large-scale social change from where they
stand."
Newman, technology and commerce partnership
manager for the California Business
Transportation and Housing Agency, moderated a
discussion that sought to zero in on the bottom
line - the business prospects for stem cell
research, still in its early stages.
"We came up with a scenario with regard to the
financial landscape," he said. "We're assuming a
10-year payback as a reasonable expectation.
This is for the investor community. And within
that scenario, companies are starting to move
now, should start to move now, and the venture
capitalists would come down three to five years
down the road."
The one-day stem cell symposium, organized and
co-sponsored by the San Francisco-based Women's
Technology Cluster, ended Tuesday. Other
sponsors included Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw
Pittman LLP and
DNA
Bridges, both of San Francisco.
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