| In a novel effort to simplify and speed up safe human stem cell research, Johns Hopkins University has set up a "one-stop shop" to preserve, create, supply and test high-quality cell lines for its own researchers now and the greater scientific community later.
The privately funded Stem Cell Resource Center, housed for now within the School of Medicine's Institute for Cell Engineering on the East Baltimore, MD campus, offers streamlined and centralized handling of cell lines and requests to use them and is expected to cut wait times and paperwork substantially, according to Chi V. Dang, M.D., Ph.D., the school's vice dean for research and head of the institute, known as ICE.
In tandem with the opening of the new center, Johns Hopkins appointed an eight-person Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight -- ESCRO -- committee modeled on guidelines set forth in 2005 by the National Academies. Similar to institutional review boards that oversee the safety of human subjects in research, the ESCRO committee's charge is to ensure that all human stem cell experiments conducted at the university are safe.
The center and ESCRO will call on Johns Hopkins experts to screen all cell lines for alterations or mutations that might compromise their quality or signal danger. For example, scientists from Johns Hopkins' McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine and the Center for Epigenetics of the Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences will examine DNA sequences and chromosomes in each cell line for alterations that look like cancer or other inherited diseases.
Last year, a team led by researchers at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins reported that human embryonic stem cell lines accumulate changes in their genetic material over time. Cells grown in the lab longer were worse off, containing the wrong number of chromosomes, changes in the marks that control genes, or changes in the DNA sequence. While the precise effects of these changes aren't known, some resemble those seen in cancer cells. Whether the changes affect the stem cells' abilities to become other cell types also is unknown.
Within the center, experts in the study of genes and their functions (genomics) will develop molecular toolkits for turning on or off genes that coax stem cells to develop into specific cell types, and experts in microscope imaging will create and test better ways to mark the cells so that they can be observed and followed as they grow and develop.
"We know of many researchers who would like to venture into stem cell science but don't in great measure because of the immense bureaucratic burden of paperwork required to gain access to individual cell lines by contract or material transfer agreements," Dang says. "The center will do all that for the entire university, so that as far as any individual investigator can tell, it will be free access."
With start-up support from a small portion of a $100 million anonymous gift to The Johns Hopkins University earlier this year, the center first will store a collection of adult and embryonic stem cell lines, some approved for studies that have federal funding and some not. The center also will keep tabs on the funding used to support research on all the cells it provides to ensure compliance with federal laws.
Human embryonic stem cells are obtained from extra embryos created during in vitro fertilization. Because the cells can become any type of cell in the body, they may one day treat or cure diseases such as Parkinson's disease or type I diabetes. According to policy established by President Bush, only human embryonic stem cell lines created before 9 p.m. ET, Aug. 9, 2001, can be used in federally funded research. The cell lines that currently meet that eligibility requirement are not suitable for use in any future human trials because they were initially grown on mouse cells and therefore might harbor mouse-specific viruses.
Go Back | 
