Company offers free access to stem cells

An Australian company which holds rights to four stem cell lines is offering them up for free to researchers -- provided the company gets a cut of any potential profits down the road.

Allan Robins, senior vice president and chief scientific officer for BresaGen, told CNN that the company is willing to provide free access to the four stem cell lines his company derived as long as it can share the profits of anything developed from them, such as a drug or cure for a disease. The lines are among the 60 cleared by President Bush for federal funding.

"BresaGen would like to give the cells away because we think from a moral and ethical standpoint, the more widely disseminated the cells are to do bona fide research and development, then the better off everybody would be because we want to find cures to degenerative diseases in a timely fashion," he said.

He added: "We would obviously like to see some return to the company."

BresaGen's human embryonic stem cell lab is in Athens, Georgia.

Robins comments underscore a key component of the emerging field of embryonic stem cell research -- money. While scientists and researchers have talked about the potential to cure a variety of ailments through such research, there is also the lure of profits.

There's been concern among scientists that there would be limited access to embryonic stem cell lines because the University of Wisconsin holds the patent on the technique to make human embryonic stem cells. But Robins said that offering them up for free, at least at the outset, would avoid any patent issues. "I think we have the right to do that because that's not a commercial transaction," Robins said.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), which holds the patent, says it wants to cooperate with the government to help provide access to its research, but how that will work still remains to be seen. University officials have said they expect a $5,000 licensing fee from anybody that uses its technique. WARF officials are scheduled to meet with representatives from the National Institutes of Health this week.

BresaGen officials told CNN they have a two-hour meeting scheduled for Wednesday with NIH officials.

Many of the rest of the 60 stem cell lines are owned by other companies in United States, Singapore, Sweden and India, according to U.S. government officials. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has said access to the 60 stem cell lines won't be a problem. However, researchers and ethicists have questioned that notion, saying companies obviously have their profits in mind.

Meanwhile, the government has yet to determine just how much money will be allocated to the controversial research, and how researchers will qualify for the grants.

Stem cells are blank cells that can be turned into specialized cells such as heart cells, or any kind of tissue in the body. Researchers want to take these blank cells from human embryos, transfer them into specialized cells or tissues and find treatments, even cures for diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart disease and spinal cord injuries.