Stem Cell Facility Puts Wisconsin at Forefront

The WiCell Research Institute's announcement Monday that it has been awarded a prestigious four-year, $16 million federal contract to create the nation's first National Stem Cell Bank is a sign of respect for the state's pioneering and innovative approach to the new field of research.

Embryonic stem cells are so-called "blank slate" cells that can evolve into any type of adult cell. Researchers are very interested in them because of their potential use in the fields of drug discovery, human development and disease treatment.

On Monday, a star-studded panel of scientists, politicians, and university administrators gathered in a conference room at the MG&E Innovation Center in Madison to announce the contract, which was won by UW-Madison over competition from several other universities and research centers. The negotiations with NIH were closed, so no information was available on those competitors.

Stem cell research pioneer James Thomson was among those present at the announcement, as was Gov. Jim Doyle, U.S. Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley, UW System Board of Regents President David Walsh, UW System President Kevin Reilly, and Derek J. Hei, technical director of the Wisconsin Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility at UW-Madison.

"Although the creation of this center is very important, I hope that NIH will ultimately decide to fund additional similar centers across the United States to support this rapidly expanding field," Thomson added.

The new National Stem Cell Bank carries several goals. Chief among them is to provide a "one-stop-shop" that will do three main things: lower stem cells costs to researchers, provide quality control and comprehensive comparisons of stem cell lines, and offer better technical support.

As of now, 312 shipments of stem cell lines have been sent to researchers in the United States and 21 foreign countries. But the $5,000 price per line has been "an irritant" to other scientists, said Carl Gulbrandsen, WiCell board president and managing director of WARF, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. The new price will be $500. That will make the stem cell lines available to a greater number of scientists, he said.

Scientists wish to understand the properties of as many individual stem cell lines as possible and to standardize methods for growing them. While the WiCell Institute now has the rights to five lines of embryonic stem cells, other research institutions maintain separate lines. Six are in Australia at ES Cell International, and an agreement has already been reached for the new stem cell bank to distribute those lines. Eleven other lines are at research institutions in other states and foreign countries. No agreements have yet been reached with those institutions.

Gulbrandsen, sporting a denim blue "WiCell" baseball cap at the news conference, said the new stem cell bank would be challenging to maintain, "both politically and mechanically."

"The contract has a lot in it. It means we will have to do a lot more hiring," he said.

Excerpts above came from an article written by the Wisconsin Technology Network

Katherine Esposito 
Published 10/03/05