Michigan’s first stem cell commercialization lab will open in TechTown, Wayne State’s research and technology park, as early as this summer.
The $2.9 million project, which will be funded by Wayne County, aims to both promote cures of several disorders and serve as a successful business model for similar ventures.
“We would provide services for which we would charge,” said James Eliason, the chief designer of the lab. “This would include growing stem cell lines and providing them to outside researchers in companies as well as academia.”
The lab’s focus will be to build a bank of stem cells, which includes categories of disorders doctors intend to study.
“There has not been one group that has thought of making a bank for specific diseases so that we can really learn about cures,” said Dr. Carol Brenner, a Wayne State School of Medicine professor who will work directly with the lab. “We had to find a niche —something we could do, and we could do well.”
That niche involves a partnership with Graham Parker, a pediatric neurologist at Children’s Hospital. Parker and Brenner will work together to build the bank.
“The one thing that stem cells can definitely tell us about is development,” Parker said.
“The particular focus that just absolutely cries out to be addressed is neural disorders.”
The research done at the lab will help to “model the conditions that we know affect the living human being,” Parker said.
For example, he specializes in spinal muscular atrophy — a disorder caused by a loss of motor neurons in the brain stem and spinal cord.
“Spinal muscular atrophy is rather unique in that there is a single gene that goes wrong, that mutates, that produces the condition. And it only affects motor neurons,” Parker said.
“In order to grow a motor neuron, you have to start with an embryonic stem cell or, the new field of research for the world, an induced pluripotent stem cell.”
Induced pluripotent stem cells, or adult stem cells, are extracted from patients to study their respective disorder. Patients must sign a waiver to provide samples of adult stem cells.
“It’s not invasive; it’s not going to hurt anybody,” Brenner said.
The study of this type of cell is far less controversial than study through embryonic stem cells, which will also be studied at the TechTown lab.
Wayne State President Dr. Jay Noren had commented on stem cell research Oct. 30, 2008, during a debate on Proposal 2. It passed, allowing research on embryonic stem cells in Michigan.
“There’s no question our researchers would want it,” he had said. “And I and my administration would support it, should it pass.”
On March 9, President Barack Obama was expected to loosen some restriction on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, broadening the field of research that doctors at TechTown can do.
According to Graham, adult stem cells are the most viable option “to build up a bank of cell lines that we will be able to use to model neurological diseases.”
Juleigha Norus, president of Wayne State Students for Life, approved of the study of adult stem cells in place of embryonic.
“I support adult stem cell research because it does not involve the destruction of human embryos,” Norus said. “I don’t think you can justify any good if it is destroying human life to get the result.”
Norus said doctors “can harvest adult stem cells without there being any harm done.”
But for others, there is more to be debated.
“I think stem cell research plays too much like God,” said Clara Kammann, a global supply chain management major.
“It’s still messing with natural selection. Everybody wants a cure for everything. Who doesn’t? There’s not a fix for everything — there just isn’t. Some things are because they just are.”
Kammann predicts “a lot of government waste going on of tax dollars, or misappropriation of funds.”
“Just because we have stem cell research doesn’t mean they’re going to be using that time and those resources wisely,” she said. “I don’t think there’s going to be enough transparency in the kind of work that they’re doing to make it more ethical for me.”
But Brenner hopes to ease those concerns.
“We can’t simply do what we want,” Brenner said. “We have to be approved by committees to prove that what we are doing is ethical.”
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