Regents to hear stem cell comment

LINCOLN -- A California researcher who uses embryonic stem cells to investigate the causes of Alzheimer's Disease will urge the University of Nebraska Board of Regents to allow NU researchers to use additional embryonic stem cell lines to be approved under new federal guidelines.

Lawrence S.B. Goldstein said it would be "unprecedented" at the national level for the regents to enact a policy that would, in effect, be stricter than both state and federal law.

"It will send a signal to the rest of the world that ethically appropriate scientific innovation is not welcome at the University of Nebraska," he said. "That would be a terribly unfortunate message to send."

Nebraska Right to Life and other Nebraska anti-abortion groups have announced their plans to picket Friday's Board of Regents meeting and to speak during a public comment period in favor of policy to prohibit research using newly approved embryonic stem cell lines.

The Board of Regents has no agenda item on the topic and is unlikely to take any action Friday, Board Chairman Kent Schroeder said.

The pro-research group Nebraska Coalition for Lifesaving Cures is paying for Goldstein's trip to Nebraska to counter the anti-abortion groups' message.

State law forbids university funds and facilities to be used to create or destroy embryos for the purpose of research. However, university policy has allowed embryonic stem cell research to occur with pre-existing lines of cells approved by the federal government.

After President Obama agreed to allow new lines of stem cells to be used for research, Nebraska anti-abortion groups began pressing the Board of Regents to adopt policy that would limit the research only to those lines of cells approved during the Bush administration.

Embryonic stem cell research typically is conducted upon "lines" of cells generated from an embryo, not on the embryo itself. Goldstein's lab, for example, does not itself generate the lines of cells but obtains them from private laboratories that developed them from embryos created for in vitro fertilization but were going to otherwise be discarded.

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