An Industry in Embryo.(stem cell research)(Brief Article)

For the scientists at Reliance Life Sciences, an eight-month-old medical-research lab in Mumbai (Bombay), the sudden attention from the U.S. medical-research establishment has been intoxicating. In the outfit's fourth-floor conference room late last month, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson was on the videoconference line. For two hours, he and 11 luminaries from Washington's National Institutes of Health quizzed the Reliance team on their seven embryonic stem-cell lines. "It wasn't exactly a shock because we'd been following U.S. politics closely," says Reliance founder Firuza Parikh. "But it was a pleasant surprise."

Apparently the Reliance scientists gave answers to the U.S. experts' liking. As the NIH revealed last week, the Indian start-up is among 10 research centers in the world holding stem-cell colonies that meet the criteria laid down by President George W. Bush--most importantly that the cells were culled from embryos no later than Aug. 9 (following story). Another Indian outfit, Bangalore-based National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), has three more potential stem-cell lines, bringing the country's total to 10 of only 64 lines identified by the NIH. Bush's edict puts NCBS and Reliance on a shortlist of labs eligible to receive a portion of the $250 million Bush has earmarked for U.S. funding of the research. It also has cast a spotlight on the surprisingly robust state of medical research in India, where biotechnology is being targeted as the beneficiary of the country's next wave of investment, after information technology. "Potentially it's a huge opportunity for India," says Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chairman of Biocon India. "It's a signal to the rest of the world that India is part of a small club participating in embryonic stem-cell research."

Why such breathless excitement? Embryonic stem cells possess the powerful ability to turn into any kind of specialized cells. That means they could, at least theoretically, be cultivated to replace any of the 220 varieties of human tissue--pancreatic cells for diabetes sufferers, for instance, or brain cells for Parkinson's patients. To get there from here, researchers need to do a lot of experimenting, which means they need a lot of stem cells from human embryos. Unlike their colleagues in the United States, Indian researchers are relatively unhampered in this work by cultural, ethical or religious considerations. In a country of 1 billion poor people, abortion is legal and common. Few undergoing in vitro fertilization treatment have moral qualms about releasing extra eggs for research purposes. India also has a surplus of scientists skilled in molecular and cell biology. In addition, cell-culture experiments don't require much in the way of overhead, which lowers the barrier to entry. The Indian government even encourages research on embryonic stem cells up to 14 days old. "We're open to embryonic stem-cell work and essentially there are no ...