Madison-based stem cell bank's receipt of cell lines called 'extremely important'
The U.S. National Stem Cell Bank -- located at the WiCell Research Institute, a private, nonprofit support organization for UW-Madison -- announced Monday it has received deposits of two human embryonic stem cell lines from Cellartis AB.
The National Stem Cell Bank now has received all 21 cell lines from the six providers listed on the National Institutes of Health federal registry.
"The addition of the Cellartis lines to the National Stem Cell Bank is extremely important because now we'll be able to distribute these lines to the worldwide research community," Derek Hei, a UW-Madison researcher and leader of the NSCB, said in a statement. "We'll also be able to generate data unique to these lines that is valuable to the advancement of stem cell research."
The National Institutes of Health established the National Stem Cell Bank in September 2005. The group's mission is to obtain, characterize and distribute the 21 human embryonic stem cell lines that currently may be used in federally funded research.
There are three U.S. providers to the NIH-registry stem cell lines: WiCell at UW-Madison, University of California at San Francisco and Novocell. The three providers outside this country are ES Cell International (ESI) in Singapore; Technion in Israel; and Cellartis, a biotechnology company based in Sweden.
To date, 16 of these lines have completed the NSCB's quality control process and are available for distribution to scientists around the world. The NSCB will now begin testing these new lines to ensure the identity of the cell line and cell characteristics and that the starting cell material is free from contaminants.
WiCell Research Institute recently began its own bank, the WiCell International Stem Cell Bank, to study and distribute stem cells that currently cannot be offered through its current contract with the NIH.
