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Life Sciences Board Pushes Ahead on Stem Cell Registry

By Gintautas Dumcius
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, SEPT. 13, 2007…..As Gov. Deval Patrick's request for funding to fuel a first-in-the-nation stem cell bank awaits legislative action, the administration is fast-tracking a proposal for an international stem cell registry and setting the stage to move quickly on the proposed bank at UMass Worcester.

Patrick's $1 billion life sciences initiative, which is awaiting a public hearing before the Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, includes funding for a centralized repository of new stem cell lines that would be available to the public and private sectors for research.

UMass officials were instructed Thursday at a meeting of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center's board of directors to bring back a proposal next month further outlining plans for a stem cell bank and an online registry on stem cells, with a possible vote to follow.

"I think the registry will be a very exciting idea and will be another piece of the branding of Massachusetts as the center of life science research throughout the world," said Housing and Economic Development Secretary Daniel O'Connell, who chairs the five-member board. "And given the modest cost of it, I think that the board is ready to entertain, to move ahead on that, with the limited resources we have now."

The online registry, run by scientists, would cost an estimated $1.5 million over three years and be located with the bank at a building on the medical school's Shrewsbury campus, according to a presentation given to the board by UMass Worcester interim chancellor Michael Collins.

"The bank is a larger undertaking, but we want to be ready to move forward with it as soon as possible," O'Connell said.

"It's an information bank instead of a stem cell bank," said UMass President Jack Wilson, who sits on the board. The registry would include information on all stem cell lines available for research, how they were created, gender, genetic components, and eventually what advancements they may lead to.

Both the registry, taking up roughly six offices, and the bank would eventually be moved to the main medical campus, UMass officials said.

The bank's cost was pegged at $13 million over three years, according to Collins's presentation. Housing tanks of liquid nitrogen to preserve the stem cells, the bank would initially take up roughly 10,000 to 15,000 square feet on a floor of the Shrewsbury campus's Reed, Rose and Gordon Building, Collins said.

"It's not the custodial aspect of the bank that's the most attractive," O'Connell told the News Service. "It is the research, training aspects that will surround the bank and the kind of scientists that will be drawn to the resource that is the bank that are particularly attractive to us."

Funding for the projects would come from the $10 million fund the center oversees and Patrick is hoping to expand through his broader $1 billion life sciences initiative.

Marc Beer, CEO of the Cambridge-based ViaCell company and a board member, said once a registry is set up, no other state or university will be able to follow, allowing the state to corner the market. UMass officials told board members the state and university could be the first to have both.

The Patrick administration says Boston University, Brigham & Women's, Children's Hospital, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, Partners HealthCare and UMass have agreed to participate in the bank when it is completed.

O'Connell also told board members he had two conversations with Rep. Daniel Bosley, co-chair of the Economic Development and Emerging Technologies Committee, including one today. The North Adams Democrat raised "good questions" about the life sciences bill but "clearly is engaged," he said.

O'Connell said he was "pleased" with the pace of the bill getting referred to the committee and will be meeting with both Bosley and co-chair Sen. Jack Hart (D-Boston) in the future.

"I think it's a promising sign," he said.