CHINA HEALTH SCIENCES NEWSLETTER
Vol. 4 , No. 16 - November 5, 2003
TOPICS THIS ISSUE:
- Chinese researchers report using rabbit eggs to grow human stem cells
- Hainan Province Eyes Biomedicine Industry
- Super Beam Centre for Diagnosis of Cancer to be Established in Shanghai
- Takara Bio expands market for reagents in China
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Chinese researchers report using rabbit eggs to grow human stem cells
Dr. Huizhen Sheng led a team of scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University who have reported fusing human skin cells with rabbit eggs to produce early stage embryos, which in turn yielded stem cells. The approach suggests a new way to produce human embryonic stem cells, which many scientists hope to use eventually for treating disease.
The Shanghai scientists' work, published in August in Cell Research, a peer-reviewed journal of the government-affiliated Chinese Academy of Sciences, is likely to intensify debate over the ethical ramifications of embryonic stem cell research. Embryos must be destroyed to harvest such cells. Aided by a growing corps of foreign-trained scientists like Sheng, China is investing aggressively in biotech research. Last year, spending on biotech totaled 2.25 billion yuan (US$272.4 million), up from 260 million yuan (US$31.5 million) in 1986.
The focus of a new specialty known as "regenerative medicine," stem cells form in the first few days of embryonic development. They later develop into the many different types of cells that make up the body's bone, muscle, organs and other tissue. Some scientists believe that by using skin cells or other cells from a patient to create an embryo through cloning, they could extract stem cells that could be grown into tissue that genetically matches the patient's own. That tissue could then be used for transplants and medical procedures in the patient without rejection.
The Chinese scientists fused human skin cells with rabbit eggs from which they had removed the nuclei, which contains DNA. The DNA from the skin cells took over and underwent "reprogramming," no longer directing the life of a skin cell, but rather driving embryonic development. The resulting embryos were clones of the human donors, although they were never intended to develop into babies.
Stem cells can be found in some adult tissue as well as in umbilical cord blood, aborted fetuses or discarded test-tube embryos. But the use of embryonic and fetal tissue is controversial. China bans cloning humans for reproductive purposes, but has allowed cloning for research.
(Source: Associated Press Worldstream)
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Hainan Province Eyes Biomedicine Industry
In the latest attempt to strike it rich in China's biological pharmaceutical sector, Hainan officials are vowing the island province will develop a biomedicine valley. Experts warn, however, the ambitious plan could be snuffed if the tropical island fails to quickly absorb massive capital and talents. If it proceeds, the biomedicine valley will be located in Haikou, capital of South China's Hainan Province.
According to its development plan, medicine valley aims to become one of China's four pharmaceutical industrial bases. Its output is expected to be worth between 10 and 15 billion yuan (US $ 1.21 billion to 1.81 billion). Hainan plans to attract more than 100 major pharmaceutical firms to establish production facilities in the valley. Hainan, China's only tropical province, has tremendous potential, said Qu Dali, director of the Administrative Commission of Haikou High-tech Development Zone. The island has 4,600 plants, including 3,080 plants that could be used as ingredients in medicines. Haikou's air is considered the cleanest in China. As other Chinese cities battle air pollution at various times of the year, Haikou's Grade A air quality rating remains constant.
Manufacturing of medicines became a major industry in Haikou in the mid-1990s, after the real estate bubble burst. More than 80 pharmaceutical firms have established facilities in Haikou. The firms' combined output last year was worth 2.1 billion yuan (US $ 253.6 million), or 13.2 percent Haikou's industrial output. Hainan's drug-making industry gained fame several months ago when it was learnt firms on the island manufactured six of the nine drugs recommended by China's Ministry of Health for treating the deadly flu-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Those medicines included Thymopentin, used to regulate the immune system, and Lyophilized Ribavirin, an antibiotic.
(Source: Business Daily Update)
Super Beam Centre for Diagnosis of Cancer to be Established in Shanghai
The Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai government have announced plans to create China's first major light facility - a super beam centre for the early detection of cancer. The new facility, to be in operation within the next five years, will be located in Shanghai's Zhangjiang High-Tech Park, according to the Business Daily Update. It is expected that the centre will help to boost China's competitiveness in the areas of medical research and life sciences. Total investment in the new centre, which will utilise state-of-the-art synchrotrons radiation technology to create the super beams, will be in the region of RMB1.2bn (US$144.6m). The establishment of the centre, initially proposed five years ago, reflects the government's increasing focus on healthcare reform, and is indicative of the government's current political prioritisation of healthcare.
(Source: World Markets Research Center)
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A BRAVE new world is coming to Chinese medicine on the 11th floor of a gleaming modern hospital in Shenzhen: instead of disposing of babies, doctors are creating them. After decades of harsh family planning policies, including compulsory sterilisation and forced abortions, Chinese doctors do not always take a cheerful view of the prospects of a career in obstetrics and gynaecology.
But in Dr Li Rong's fertility clinic, all is bright sunlight and soft classical music as anxious husbands and wives sit waiting for their appointments beneath posters showing happy, rosy-cheeked infants. Li, a smiling, down-to-earth woman, is pioneering a choice unheard of for Chinese couples only a few years ago.
Encouraging the Chinese to reproduce was last heard of under Mao Tse-tung. Since the late 1970s the state's priority has been to curb the population by enforcing a one-child rule for city dwellers and a limit of two babies for rural peasants.
The concentration on birth control ignored the misery of an estimated 39m Chinese affected by fertility problems. But as prosperity grew and scientific knowledge advanced, Li and her colleagues tiptoed into the medical mainstream. Today her clinic at a government-funded university hospital in the southern boom town of Shenzhen is one of 200 in China that offer treatment to infertile couples.
The state will not contribute to the cost so couples must pay between Pounds 750 and Pounds 1,500 for IVF treatment. That is likely to amount to many months' wages. The Communist party's one-child policy and the advance of ultrasound technology put expectant mothers under pressure to learn the sex of their unborn child and, if it was female, to have an abortion. The government says 117 boys are born for every 100 girls.
Would-be parents who go to Li are not given that choice. "We cannot tell them the sex," she says firmly. "We have a policy not to do so and I never, ever tell them the sex when we do the ultrasound. If I'm asked I simply say it's not clear." The standards at Li's hospital are not the norm. Only three out of 30 local clinics operate with government licences. It is widely assumed that in many private clinics a payment would guarantee sex identification and an abortion on demand.
