Vatican enters partnership with stem cell research firm

THE Vatican has entered into an unusual partnership with a small US biotech company to promote using adult stem cells for treating disease, rather than focusing research on embryonic stem cells.

The Vatican’s culture office and NeoStem yesterday provided details for today’s conference at the Vatican on adult stem cells, which will draw scientists, patients, biotech chiefs executive and cardinals.

Church teaching holds that life begins at conception. As a result, the Vatican opposes embryonic stem cell research because embryos are destroyed in the process.

The conference and partnership with New York-based NeoStem is part of the Vatican’s recent $1 million (€725,000), five-year initiative to promote adult stem cell therapies and research, and in the process shift popular attention away from embryonic research.

Transplants of adult stem cells have become a standard lifesaving therapy for people with leukaemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases; and are studied in people who suffer from multiple sclerosis, heart attacks and diabetes. The more controversial embryonic cells may someday be used to grow replacement tissue for diseases like Parkinson’s or diabetes.

It was former US president George W Bush’s decision in 2001 to allow only restricted federal financing for researching embryonic stem cells that sparked much of the controversy over the technology.

Bush’s health secretary, Tommy Thompson, is a panellist at the conference and told reporters yesterday that science had moved beyond destroying embryos.

“Why destroy an embryo?” Thompson asked. “We are in a new science of adult stem cells that are pluripotent,” or able to differentiate into other tissues.

Vatican officials acknowledged the unusual nature of the partnership between the Church and a publicly-traded, for-profit biotech firm.

But Reverend Tomasz Trafny, head of the science department in the Vatican’s culture office, said NeoStem’s research and mission corresponded with the Vatican’s concerns.