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Embryonic Stem Cell Decision Felt Here

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By LINDSAY PETERSON

lpeterson@tampatrib.com

Published: March 10, 2009

TAMPA - Researchers are cheering President Barack Obama's decision to lift federal restrictions on funding for embryonic stem cell research.

For years, many of them have tailored projects to Bush administration rules, the ones now being overturned.

President George W. Bush limited taxpayer money for embryonic stem cell research to a small number of stem cell lines that had been created before Aug. 9, 2001. Those limitations steered millions of federal dollars toward research with other types of stem cells.

Stem cells basically are "blank" cells that have the ability to turn into any tissue in the body. Embryonic stem cells are said to be the most flexible, but other stem cells, from umbilical cord blood, for instance, can morph into other types of cells.

Interest was so great in these alternative stem cells that the University of South Florida created a company, now called Saneron CCEL Therapeutics Inc., which produces cells it describes as noncontroversial for stem cell treatments.

Saneron was part of a 2004 USF study showing that cord blood cells could protect a brain from stroke damage, combined with a drug that allowed the cells to pass through the brain's protective barrier. In 2005, Saneron cells were used in a USF study that showed that cord blood stem cells could reduce heart attack damage in rats.

In 2008, Saneron was part of a USF study concluding that cord blood stem cells limited the damage of Alzheimer's disease in mice brains.

Saneron co-founder Paul Sanberg of the USF College of Medicine said the research has been promising but that the gap in embryonic stem cell research is hampering the potential for even greater breakthroughs.

He is concerned that opening the door to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research could shift money away from the projects that use other types of stem cells. But it doesn't dampen his desire to work with embryonic cells.

"We still need to understand the biology of embryonic stem cells," he said. "Until we understand the biology of embryonic stem cells, we won't truly know the potential" for curing a range of diseases from Alzheimer's to multiple sclerosis.

Researchers need to be studying every type of stem cell, said Dennis Steindler, the executive director of the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute. "By studying each, you find out what would be the best cell for the specific disease or injury."

Reporter Lindsay Peterson can be reached at (813) 259-7834.

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