Tokyo

Japan has joined the club of countries that have produced their own human embryonic stem-cell lines.

Norio Nakatsuji and his group at Kyoto University announced on 27 May that their first stem cells had been successfully established and would be made available to other researchers in the autumn. The cells will be sold at cost to both academic and commercial researchers in Japan who have the government's permission to use them.

Under rules set in September 2001, researchers in Japan can conduct research on human embryonic stem cells, subject to approval by university and education-ministry committees. The education ministry is still deciding how to handle requests for access to the cell lines from foreign laboratories.

According to Nakatsuji, about ten laboratories have already expressed an interest in the cell lines, and he expects 20–30 applications to use the cells by the end of the year.

His group plans to establish five more stem-cell lines for researchers. But difficulties in collecting frozen embryos — which requires extensive informed-consent procedures — have slowed down the group's progress so far, one team member says.

Several research groups in Japan have been working with human embryonic stem cells bought from suppliers abroad, such as WiCell Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and Monash University near Melbourne, Australia. But unlike cells from these suppliers, those from Kyoto will not come with material-transfer agreements claiming a share of the profits from any commercial products derived from the research.