Stem cell researchers and government officials from eight countries and territories in the Asia-Pacific region have established a formal network.

Named SNAP (for Stem cell Network of the Asia-Pacific region), the network includes representatives from Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. Its purpose is to foster opportunities for young scientists, establish deeper collaborations across scientists in the region, and provide an authoritative source of information to the public.

SNAP will concentrate initially on providing opportunities for skill- and career-building for young scientists, many of whom face difficulties in traveling to workshops or symposia held in other regions of the world. The network will also seek to increase visibility of its members' stem cell labs and research achievements through a website.

Shin-Ichi Nishikawa of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology was elected to lead the SNAP steering committee at the launch meeting held in Bangkok this September. He emphasized that the network would seek to complement the activities of other international stem cell organizations. “One of the highest priorities is to give young scientists who are unable travel extensively overseas chances to interact and learn with leading scientists on a local basis. This will mean bringing experts to the students and young researchers, which we feel can be achieved more easily within a limited geographic region.”

I think one of the first goals for the network should be to get Japan to start looking East. Alan Colman, Executive Director of the Singapore Stem Cell Symposium

In the near term, one of the network's primary objectives will be to expose scientists working in Asia and Australia to their geographical neighbors. In recent years, many of the region's nations, including Korea, Singapore, Australia, India, and China, have made stem cell biology a centerpiece of their life sciences portfolios, but despite this concentration of funds (and, increasingly, of expertise), there have been as yet few attempts to extend stem cell biology beyond national borders. Japan, with a number of highly successful stem cell laboratories, has notably failed to take a leadership role, an absence which is felt keenly in other countries flush with funding and needing to develop the skill sets of their research force. “I think one of the first goals for the network should be to get Japan to start looking East,” Alan Colman, Executive Director of the Singapore Stem Cell Symposium said at the Bangkok meeting.

Participants at the launch meeting identified several areas of interest for workshops and seminars, including clinical applications, commercialization issues, best practices for GMP facilities for cell processing and banking, and methods for the culture and differentiation of human ES cells and the induction of pluripotency. A SNAP steering committee is now soliciting workshop proposals.

As it plans seminars and workshops, the network will create a website to highlight stem cell research programs, meetings and achievements. The website, to be launched through a seed grant from the Australian Stem Cell Centre in Melbourne, will include information on national regulations, policies and initiatives, descriptions of individual laboratories, a calendar of meetings and events, and research highlights. This will help address what scientists in the region refer to as the “visibility gap”, a perception that high-quality research in Asia is more likely to be overlooked than similar research in Europe or North America.

Another function for the network in several member nations will be to serve as an authoritative source of information on the promise and the present-day reality of clinical applications for stem cell research. Scientists in Thailand, China and India in particular must contend with reports that stem cells are available for injection into patients suffering conditions ranging from heart failure to autism, raising serious concerns among the stem cell research community. Surapol Issaragrisil of the Mahidol University, Siriraj Hospital who served as the local organizer and host of the Bangkok meeting, noted, “We need to be able to let people know where the science actually stands, because there's a lot of bad information out there.”

For the first two years of its existence, SNAP will remain a coalition of independent members, after that time it will consider whether to organize as a formal scientific society. The group may also formalize relations and work with other international stem cell organizations to strengthen ties with the global community. The idea to create SNAP arose from discussions at a meeting hosted by Nature Asia-Pacific this June.