London

Britain is staking an aggressive claim for global leadership in stem-cell research by offering all of its biologists easy access to newly derived, high-quality embryonic stem-cell lines.

On 27 February, the Medical Research Council (MRC) confirmed its plans to establish a public cell bank to characterize and store adult and embryonic stem cells. It will also distribute these cells for a nominal charge to both academic and commercial research groups.

Coming on top of recent British regulations, which are among the first in the world to endorse publicly funded research on embryonic stem cells, science administrators hope that the cell bank will help to foster world leadership in the emerging field of regenerative biology.

“I think it's a very smart thing to do, it's a very positive move,” says Ron McKay, a leading stem-cell researcher at the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “The position of Britain now in this field is critical.”

The bank, which should open in 2003, will house embryonic stem-cell lines that are expected to be derived in Britain over the coming months, together with some imported lines already existing. The MRC announced its plans to build the bank just as a House of Lords select committee on stem-cell research published a report recommending that such a facility be established.

No UK group has yet derived embryonic stem cells, although supporters argue that Britain now has a regulatory framework that will give its researchers an inside track to the early clinical application of such cells. The House of Lords report also clears the way for 'therapeutic' cloning of a patient's cells to create early-stage embryos as a source of stem cells, which Britain permits under a law passed at the end of 2000.

Stem cells taken from early embryos can turn into any type of tissue, and researchers believe the cells could be used to treat a range of conditions including Parkinson's disease, hepatitis, diabetes and leukaemia.

“The MRC supports this area of research and believes that it has real potential,” says George Radda, the council's chief executive. “The stem-cell bank will allow researchers to explore this enormous potential.”

Radda says that researchers using MRC funds to derive embryonic stem cells will be required to place the resulting cell lines in the new bank; other UK funding agencies are expected to introduce similar guidelines. Providing the cells meet strict quality-control criteria, they will then be frozen, stored and made available to anyone who wants them for projects approved by an advisory committee.

At first, only groups in Britain will be eligible to apply, but Radda says that the MRC “in principle” would be willing to make them available to overseas groups.

The bank's location has yet to be determined, although Radda says it will not be at a university, a commercial organization or an MRC research institute, as the MRC wants to avoid a situation in which researchers involved in stem-cell research have a say in decisions about who should be supplied with the cells. A decision on location will be made in July, the MRC says.

The ease with which UK researchers will be able to obtain identical cell lines from the bank will help different groups to compare their results, says Richard Gardner, an embryologist at the University of Oxford and chairman of the Royal Society working group on stem-cell research.

Dozens of embryonic stem-cell lines have already been derived worldwide, but Gardner says their quality depends on the conditions under which they were derived — which were highly variable. To provide the best research resource, he suggests, “one essentially needs to start again under very carefully defined conditions”