Headlines
As reported by The Hartford Courant, February 16, 2006.
UConn Advances Stem Cell Capabilities
By William Hathaway
The University of Connecticut Health Center has hired an expert on human embryonic stem cells and also has reached a tentative agreement to lease a Farmington building as headquarters of its new stem cell institute, university officials said Wednesday.
As soon as April, UConn scientists will be ready to work with human
stem cell lines, including those ineligible to receive federal funding.
Overseeing the human stem cell effort will be Dr. Ren-He Xu, a senior scientist at the WiCell Research Institute, a private laboratory affiliated with the University of Wisconsin. WiCell creates human embryonic stem cell lines and distributes them to scientists nationally.
Xu, who will also hold an appointment at the Center for Regenerative Biology in Storrs, will start work in April. The university has begun efforts to acquire human embryonic stem cell lines, said Marc Lalande, chairman of the department of genetics and developmental biology at UConn.
"We're ready to go," Lalande said.
Under guidelines ordered by President Bush, human embryonic cells created after August 2001 are ineligible for federal funding. The funding restrictions prompted Connecticut to become the third state to approve funding for human embryonic research. Lalande said the hiring of Xu puts UConn in a strong position to apply for funding from the state, which is expected to make $20 million available this spring.
The federal funding restrictions also forced institutions such as UConn and Yale University that want to conduct research with human embryonic cells to search out lab space and equipment that were not built or purchased with federal dollars.
UConn has tentatively agreed to enter into a 20-year lease of the Farmtech building, a 108,000-square-foot building near the health center campus. The deal requires approval of the trustees of both the health center and university, said Bruce Carlson, chief of staff at the health center, who negotiated the deal.
Carlson declined to disclose financial terms of the lease but said the building is big enough to house stem cell laboratories and companies that might want to commercialize scientific discoveries.
Lalande said many UConn scientists at both the Farmington and Storrs campuses have expressed interest in human embryonic stem cell research. He said the university has already contacted both Harvard University and Xu's former employer, WiCell, to obtain human embryonic stem cell lines.
In addition, Xiangzhong "Jerry" Yang, director of the Center for Regenerative Biology in Storrs, has proposed creating new embryonic stem cell lines through cloning. The procedure would create new cell lines by fusing DNA from a skin cell of a patient and an egg with its nucleus removed, to create embryonic cells genetically identical to donor DNA.