Distribution of human embryonic stem cell lines: who, when, and where.

摘要

Unlike most other broadly disseminated tools of biotechnology, moral, legal, political, and economic factors impact whether and how hESC lines reach the researchers who need them. On August 9,2001, President George W. Bush announced that federal funding for hESC research would be limited to already-existing cell lines. That policy constrained academic scientists by hampering their ability to freely create or select research materials (Rao, 2006). Since Bush's announcement, there have been anecdotal reports about how federal and state policies might hinder or aid this promising area of research (Long-aker et al., 2007). Yet no research has described when, where, and to whom these lines go when they leave major repositories, and little empirical evidence examines the effects variation in state-level policies might exert on researchers' use of hESC lines. To address these questions, we use materials transfer agreements (MTAs) to track shipments of 1662 vials of stem cells from two major U.S.-based repositories, WiCell Research Institute (WiCell) and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI). We begin by documenting aggregate trends in the global distribution of hESC lines. Next, we analyze interstate differences in shipment rates by biomed-ical research capacity, indexed by cumulative NIH funding levels, and state-level hESC policies. We find that predictions about the chilling effect of restrictive federal policies are oversimplified. This report provides the first systematic description of global and national flows of hESC lines from two major U.S.-based repositories.