A panel of researchers and scientists recently expressed concern that existing stem cells may not be helpful to racial minority groups because of a lack of diversity in the stem-cell lines currently being used.

An 18-member panel of scientists and ethicists made up mostly by members of Johns Hopkins University, announced last week that genetic and immunological diversity is low among the federally approved cell lines and some minority groups may later be at a disadvantage for the benefits that embryonic stem cells offer.

These scientists say they will need to either raise private funds or convince the Bush Administration to lift the ban off of the production of new stem-cell lines in order to deal with the issue.

The ban went into place in August of 2001, leaving researchers with only cell lines created prior to the ban. Currently 78 cell lines are federally approved, but so far only 11 lines have been widely available to researchers.

Most existing embryonic stem cell lines are disproportionately representative of white people, and many scientists and ethicists agree socioeconomic issues are a reason for this.

Associate Dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School and Professor of Medical Ethics R. Alta Charo said existing cell lines are developed from donation of the egg and sperm from infertile couples that had used in-vitro fertilization — a very expensive procedure.

“In the United States, in-vitro fertilization is often not covered by insurances and so is used only by those who can afford to pay privately — a group that is disproportionately white,” Charo said.

Charo also said that the other existing cell lines come from places like Australia, Sweden and Israel, where the population is predominantly white.

Tissue-specific stem cells, rather than embryonic stem cells, are often derived from a genetically diverse population, so not all stem cells are disproportionately represented.

Scientists say that embryonic stem cells may someday have clinical applications because the cells have the ability to be “coaxed” into many different cell types in the body. Scientists project embryonic stem cells could one day create more brain cells for Parkinson’s patients, insulin cells for diabetics and cardiac muscle cells for patients with heart conditions, among others.

But before researchers can apply therapy from the stem cells, they must first learn how to prevent a patient’s immune system from rejecting foreign stem cells.

“When whole organs are transplanted from a stranger, they often cause immunological rejection in the recipient’s body unless the tissues have been matched to the recipient,” Charo said.

As the panel of scientists argued last week, researchers must also have stem cell lines that are ethnically diverse to allow fair access by minority groups.

“Although tissue matching is not based on race, it is true that certain immunological types appear more frequently in certain racial and ethnic groups than others. It is important to have a donor pool that is racially and ethnically diverse to ensure availability of organs of all immunological types,” Charo said.

Other scientists think that the concerns of the panel of scientists may be somewhat overstated and premature.

“I am worried that [the panel of scientists and ethicists] are making a ‘chicken little’ scare argument in order to pressure the administration to free up their restrictions on creating new stem cell lines,” said Steven Clark, UW professor of biomedical ethics.

The panel of experts also wrote that a decision to create a number of cell lines with a maximum utility for various ethnic groups would inevitably come down to scientists creating stem-cell lines that benefit the largest number of patients: those who are white.

Clark said more realistic reasons exist for wanting to create stem cell lines from different groups in order to increase genetic diversity of the pool of cell lines.

“Whereas clinical application of embryonic stem cells is way off in the future, if at all, [the cells] are proving extremely valuable for research purposes and they provide an invaluable tool for understanding the cell and molecular biology of the earliest stages of embryonic development,” Clark said.