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The gatekeepers of hES cell products

Does every road to commercial products derived from human embryonic stem cells run through Wisconsin?

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References

  1. Remarks by the President on Stem Cell Research, as made available by the White House Press Office, August 9, 2001.

  2. California and New Jersey have passed stem cell funding and regulation laws. The Massachusetts House of Representatives passed stem cell funding legislation by a margin large enough to override an expected veto by Governor Mitt Romney. New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware have had stem cell funding and regulation bills introduced in their respective legislatures.

  3. Investigators from ten laboratories in the US, Australia, India, Israel and Sweden initially derived stem cells from 71 individual, genetically diverse blastocysts that met the President's criteria for use in federally funded hES cell research. http://stemcells.nih.gov/research/registry/eligibilityCriteria.asp

  4. http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/faqs.asp

  5. NIH Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry. http://stemcells.nih.gov/research/registry/

  6. Exemplary Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) and Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) from NIH-qualified vendors of eligible stem cells are available from the NIH web site. http://stemcells.nih.gov/research/registry/

  7. WiCell-NIH MOU http://stemcells.nih.gov/research/registry/MTAs/Wicell_MOU.pdf

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  13. Gallagher, K. Foundation could tap into California spending. Milwaukee J. Sentinel. February 20, 2005.

  14. Stem cell deal reached. News@UW-Madison; published online 9 January 2002, http://www.news.wisc.edu/6949.html.

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  17. 35 USC § 102.

  18. See, for example, Pluripotential embryonic stem cells and methods of making same. US Patent no. 5,453,357 (1995). This patent's relevance is controverted by Geron and WARF.

  19. 35 USC § 103.

  20. 35 USC § 112, 1st paragraph.

  21. In 2004, the European Patent Office refused to issue a patent to WARF on the grounds its claims were applicable to hES cells, which are specifically excluded from patentability in Europe. WARF's patent application was considered contrary to morality because WARF's method would require the use of a human embryo as a starting material.

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Rabin, S. The gatekeepers of hES cell products. Nat Biotechnol 23, 817–819 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0705-817

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