Jerusalem

For a team of scientists in Germany, the long wait is over. Collaborators in Israel this month began shipping them the human embryonic stem cells they need for their research.

Neuroscientist Oliver Brüstle and his group at the University of Bonn will receive the cells as part of a joint project with an Israeli team led by Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

Brüstle's team will investigate the way in which the stem cells develop into nerve cells. Although the work was approved by Germany's main research-funding agency, the DFG, last January (see Nature 415, 566; 200210.1038/415566a), the grant only came through last month.

German law forbids the production of human embryonic stem-cell lines, and research on such cells can be performed only on imported cell lines that were derived before January 2002.

By contrast, Israel is one of the few countries — including South Korea, Sweden, Singapore and the United Kingdom — to permit the production and propagation of human embryonic stem cells, as well as research on them.

Brüstle says he feels that Germany's rules are too strict, as they mean that the country's researchers will not have access to newly derived, and potentially more attractive, cell lines. “I very much hope that, as we gain more data, there will be increasing pressure to open up and even develop new cell lines,” he says.

In Israel, an advisory committee on bioethics said in 2001 that Israeli scientists should be allowed to use cells from surplus embryos from in vitro fertilization treatment and from fetuses aborted up to nine weeks after fertilization, provided that the parents give informed consent.

But Amos Shapira, a law professor at Tel Aviv University and a member of the committee, says he worries that Israel may end up as a major exporter of embryonic cells to countries with stricter rules. If care is not taken, he warns, commercial and research motives could cause violations of the requirements laid down by the committee, such as informed consent.