Stem cells are today's gene therapy: Colman

Speaking to a packed room of delegates at the Discovery Science and Biotechnology conference in Sydney last week, cloning pioneer Alan Colman described stem cell research as being in the same boat as gene therapy a decade ago.

"The thing is with this kind of research, the companies involved have to see some kind of financial reason, a return on investment, for anything they do," he said.

Colman, speaking of his current work at the Singapore-based ES Cell International, noted that the risks and slow returns associated with embryonic and other transplant stem cells were likely to be too much for many companies to support.

"The ROI is too long, and the technical risks just too great for many of the companies involved," he said."

This, he noted, was likely to mean a move towards greater interest in results from associated stem cell research -- which could become realistically useful in just a few years time.

"The hope is that work with endogenous stem cells, as a by-product of all this research, will yield some useful results. With a fair wind, we might see some technical trials by 2006.

"In many ways, we can compare this research with the hype surrounding gene therapy about twelve years ago. It is pretty much the same -- I'm sure stem cell research will yield results, but it's impossible to say when exactly," he added.

Colman said that one other aspect which will undoubtedly affect research is the need for any stem cell treatment to be uncomplicated before it stands a chance of being commercialised.

"To be commercially viable, all this [research] has to be simple. Once you start looking at complex approaches, you might as well be admitting failure," he said.

Stem the diabetic tide

Colman, currently working on endogenous stem cell therapies for diabetes, said he saw stem cell islets as the answer to the problem for type 2 sufferers.

"If we can work on replication, freezing technologies and other aspects, such as manufacturing beta cells, we might be able to counteract this leading scourge," he said.

He dismissed the possibility of therapeutic cloning as a potential answer, describing it as "not really practical or ethical", but asserted stem cell research on young disease patients with genetic defects has a lot of potential.

"At the moment there are just not enough cadavers to cope with the demand for [pancreatic islet] transplants. They seem to work, and we think that with replication we could treat 2000 diabetics with one pancreas.

"But with only 6000 pancreas available and some 16 million sufferers in the US alone, there will still be a shortfall unless we find another way," he said.