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Researchers from King's College London announced today (August 13) that they had successfully generated Britain's first human embryonic stem cell line, which they hope to deposit soon in the UK Stem Cell Bank.
The researchers derived three populations of stem cells from 58 embryos, but two of the lines were lost at an early stage. The third line has been growing for months now, according to their report in the journal, Reproductive Biomedicine Online.
King's was one of two research centers granted the first licenses to develop embryonic stem cell lines in Britain when new laws were introduced last year. The other is at Edinburgh University.
The embryos used by the London team, led by Stephen Minger and Susan Pickering, to derive the cell lines were donated by couples undergoing preimplantation genetic diagnosis.
Peter Braude, of the King's College team, said ethical considerations were the main reason the development of embryonic stem cell lines had not happened in Britain before now.
"The only way you're able to get embryos to generate embryonic stem cells is from patients undergoing fertility treatment and, effectively, if you are going to be straight with your patients, then of course the very best embryos should be available for the patient," he told The Scientist. "The ones that are left over, which are not frozen and so on, are less likely to be of any reasonable grade."
The King's group has the advantage of access to embryos from Britain's largest preimplantation genetic diagnosis program. Embryos affected, or thought to be affected, by the disorders being screened for are not appropriate for replacement in the patient but may still be high-grade and can be used in research.
"Of course, some of them will be affected by the disorder… what is of course exciting, is that you may be able to derive stem cell lines that have genetic abnormalities. Those would be very interesting for following the research," he said.
The cells could be the first embryonic line deposited with the UK Stem Cell Bank, which was established last year but has not yet started banking.
The bank is run by the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control and managed and funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), with a contribution from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
It will manage and supply ethically approved, quality-controlled adult, fetal, and embryonic stem cell lines for research and therapy. Lines deposited with the bank will be available for "withdrawal" by researchers from around the world.
The MRC's chief executive, George Radda, called the King's College announcement "an exciting day for UK science."
"The UK Stem Cell Bank has been set up to enable research in this revolutionary area of science to move forward and we hope to start banking lines this autumn. We've already had interest in banking fetal stem cell lines and it will be important to bank embryonic cell lines as well," said Radda in a statement.
Scientists who want to deposit cell lines in the bank need to apply to the Steering Committee for the Stem Cell Bank and the Use of Stem Cell Lines, chaired by Naren Patel.
That committee is currently in the process of drawing up codes of practice for deposits and withdrawals, a spokeswoman for the MRC told The Scientist. It is thought that the first draft of those guidelines could be ready shortly.
So far, a handful of applications had been received, all for fetal cell lines, she said.
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