The WiCell Research Institute, affiliated with UW-Madison, announced Thursday that it has created the WiCell Bank to distribute stem cells such as those created from skin cells last year by campus researcher James Thomson.

WiCell has housed the National Stem Cell Bank since 2005. Supported by a federal contract, it is the country's only official repository of the 21 lines, or colonies, of embryonic stem cells approved for federal funding.

Those lines, all created by 2001, include the world's first five lines derived by Thomson in 1998.

The WiCell Bank enables the nonprofit institute to distribute three lines of Thomson's new kind of stem cells — called induced pluripotent cells, or iPS cells. Many researchers around the country have requested a supply of the cells, and until now Thomson's lab staff has been in charge of growing and shipping them.

The new bank also sets WiCell up to store and disperse other iPS cell lines created at UW-Madison or elsewhere, along with any of the 300 or more embryonic stem cell lines not approved for federal funding and lines not yet created, said Erik Forsberg, executive director of WiCell.

Universities that conduct some stem cell research but don't have the capacity to test and ship cells as WiCell does are likely customers, Forsberg said.

"If there's demand, and they have don't have the ability and resources to do it, we'd be interested in helping them," he said.

It's possible the WiCell Bank could someday replace the National Stem Cell Bank.

The four-year, $16 million contract with the National Institutes of Health for the federal bank ends next year. Both presidential candidates have voted as senators to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cells, which could make the 300 or more lines created through private money available for federal funding.

Those factors, along with the availability of iPS cells, put the future of the federal bank in question, though it could continue, said Derek Hei, director of the National Stem Cell Bank.

"We're not certain (the NIH) will want to have this contract (renewed)," Forsberg said. "In the meantime, people will want cells."

The federal bank has collected 18 of the 21 stem cell lines approved for federal funding, Hei said. Two more lines, from Cellartis, of Sweden, are expected by the end of the year, he said.

WiCell has sent 750 shipments of cells from the federal bank to researchers in 32 countries. Each shipment costs $500, a fee subsidized by the federal contract.

The WiCell Bank will charge $900 for each shipment of its cells, Forsberg said. WiCell will provide technical support for growing the cells.

The iPS cells, first announced in November by Thomson and a researcher in Japan, are made by adding certain genes to skin cells to make them revert to their embryonic, or blank-slate, state.

Harvard University scientists said this month they've created iPS cell lines from patients with 10 different diseases.

Embryonic stem cells are derived from days-old embryos leftover from fertility clinics.

Scientists hope to use both kinds of cells to better understand and treat conditions such as diabetes, spinal-cord injury and Parkinson's disease.