Stem cells in Asia

Photos: Courtesy of Stephen MingerTOP: An umbilical cord blood plant outside Beijing; BOTTOM: Part of the $7.5 million-per-year stem cell laboratory in Korea.One day early in November, all the doors of Stephen Minger's lab at King's College London were getting a fresh lick of pink paint in preparation for a royal visit. Queen Elizabeth's daughter, Anne, the Princess Royal, is making an upcoming appearance to officially open the swanky new Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases.Minger, an American expatriot who is now one of the UK's highest-profile stem cell researchers, is just one of the scientists who scored a nicely outfitted cluster of labs in the building. High-end equipment in a British stem cell lab will not come as a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the constant reminders that the United Kingdom is leading the way in that field. But if you think this is good, says Minger, you ain't seen nothin' yet. (Paraphrased)Minger and other members of a UK delegation had recently returned from Asia, where they found a staggering level of technology and commitment being put into stem cell research. The group of UK science types visited Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, and Singapore in September, and what they saw left them picking their jaws up off the floor. "I came back blown away by the whole thing," he says. "It was mind-boggling to everybody."In Seoul, labs are better equipped than his own, he says, with laser-dissecting and confocal microscopes, fluorescence-activated cell-sorting (FACS) instruments, and stem cell culture facilities in abundance. At the labs of Hwang Woosuk at Seoul National University, there were other reasons to be amazed. "They're doing hundreds, almost a thousand, of cell nuclear replacements with animal oocytes a day," Minger recalls.He saw teams of six or eight people isolating oocytes from ovaries of cattle and pigs, and a room where researchers were seated at eight high-end microscopes. "There was one guy enucleating cells. one every thirty seconds. I've never seen anything like it." At the university's Medical Hospital, the Korea Stem Cell Research Center has $7.5 million in funding guaranteed each year for the next 10 years, Minger reports. "This is the sort of long-term commitment you need to have if you're going [to put] cells into patients," he says.In China, things were no less impressive. At one research center in Shanghai, Minger saw seven world-class mass spectroscopy instruments in a single lab. "We have two in the whole university," he says. Outside Beijing, a massive facility for processing cord-blood stem cells has been built, using local money, and plans are underway to build a 600-bed hospital onsite to enable the treatment of patients. The site can store millions of samples."It was all a hell of a lot further along than we ever expected," Minger says. "In terms of ideas and concepts, they're not out ahead; they're in the pack with the rest of us. But you do get the sense that it is moving more quickly toward the clinic, and in the right way, without cutting corners on ethics, either."A day or so after he got back from the Asia trip, Minger was off on another journey to the Mayo Clinic and other US institutions. He found that the technological prowess of the Americans is equal to that of the Asians, but the trip was nonetheless disappointing. Somehow, he says, the level of drive or enthusiasm is lacking."We're talking," says a member of the UK delegation of his Asian counterparts. "They're doing."

Stem cells in Asia

One day early in November, all the doors of Stephen Minger's lab at King's College London were getting a fresh lick of pink paint in preparation for a royal visit.

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