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American Morning
Lab in Athens, Georgia One of Only 10 Labs Worldwide Storing Human Embryonic Stem Cells
Aired September 05, 2001 - 11:01 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: We want to go to a scientific inner sanctum at the University of Georgia.
On the Athens, Georgia campus, CNN has gotten unprecedented access to a lab storing four precious embryonic stem cells lines. They are among only 64 lines that are authorized by President Bush for federal research dollars, and they're at the core of the ongoing debate over the controversial research.
CNN's medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now with an exclusive visit to the lab.
Elizabeth, what's going on there today?
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Colleen, well, everyone today is actually watching this Senate hearing. They're very interested to hear what's going on.
This is one of only 10 labs in the entire world that has human embryonic stem cells suitable for federal funding.
I'm here with Dr. Allan Robins, who is senior vice president.
Hello.
And he's actually going to show us some of these stem cells. We've all heard so much about them, we'd actually like to see them.
He's putting on these gloves, they're not a fashion statement, it's because these cells are frozen at minus 196 degrees. And they are in liquid nitrogen. And if he didn't wear the gloves he'd be in big trouble. And this is how they're stored. And what we're going to see here is those vials contain actual stem cells. He can't keep out for very long because they would thaw out and that would be bad. They only want to thaw them out when they're actually ready to do research on them.
And Dr. Robins, speaking of ready to do research, the whole crux of this debate thus far has been the 64 stem cell lines that President Bush announced would be ready for federal funding, that he announced on August 9. Are your cells ready for research? If I asked you today if I could have some to do some research on in a lab that I might have, would they be ready?
ALLAN ROBINS, CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFC. BRESAGEN: Yes. Secretary Thompson was talking about the derivation process starting with what he called an "inner cell mass from the blastocyst" and going out to a defined cell line. And Bresagen's cell lines are at the end of that process. So our cell lines are ready for distribution, albeit we -- it would depend on the number of labs that wanted to have them distributed to them because we think that we are going to have to bring people into Bresagen's laboratories to teach them how to grow the sells, because they're a little bit finicky to grow. So as long as we didn't have an avalanche of inquiries, we would be ready to send cells lines out.
COHEN: Now, if I asked you for -- if I were a researcher and I asked you for some of your stem cells and I came here and learned how to do it, would you charge me? How would you work that out financially and legally?
ROBINS: The idea -- Bresagen's idea is to a materials-transfer agreement, which would give us some rights to maybe future intellectual property that you would develop, and it would just be a right to negotiate for that intellectual property.
So if you're doing basic research and you didn't invent anything new, any new intellectual property, then Bresagen would gain nothing from that. But if you did, then we potentially would because we would have the right to negotiate with that. That's if you're a basic researcher.
If you're a commercial company the deal would be slightly more complex and that would depend on the company and the situation.
COHEN: Well, thank you, Dr. Robin.
This is Dr. Allan Robin of Bresagen Corporation, which is one of the 10 labs in the entire world that has human embryonic stem cells that are suitable for federal funding.
What he just told us is that the stem cells, which we've just seen here in this canister, are ready for research. There were concerns expressed at the Senate hearing that not all the cells, which are in four different countries in 10 different labs, are ready for research. And that's what they're going to continue to talk about at the hearing later today -- Colleen.
MCEDWARDS: All right, CNN's Elizabeth Cohen, thanks.
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