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Excitement among biomedical researchers over the breakthrough in the culturing of human embryonic stem cells is giving way to concerns about the possible constraints that will be imposed on access to the technology.

The techniques developed by James Thomson's group at the University of Wisconsin have been patented by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and licensed by Geron, a Californian biotechnology company. The company has licensed similar technology from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where John Gearhart's group works (see above).

Tom Okurma, Geron's vice-president of research, says the company “intends to collaborate as widely as possible”, but that cells would only be made available “under a very restrictive material transfer agreement”. “We plan to selectively transfer the cells to folks that we know, that are in the field, and have a track record of appropriate ethical applications.”

The agreement would not only protect the company's commercial interests, but also set ethical restrictions on the research that could be done — with a ban on human cloning, creation of chimaeras and modification of the germline, for example.

“The two big questions on my mind are, whether these cells are going to be widely available, and whether people with NIH grants will be able to work on them,” says Brigid Hogan, a cell biologist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.

Arthur Kaplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, says it is a “disaster” to have such fundamental technologies “privatized”, arguing that this risks impeding publication and holding back development of the technology.

Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, says he intends to challenge the Wisconsin patents at the US patent office. “There is no patent in history that is comparable in terms of the extraordinary monopoly conferred by this one,” he complains.