New stem cell licence

19 November 2004

UNSW researchers working at the Prince of Wales Hospital have had a significant coup in their work to find a treatment for type 1 diabetes.

The Hospital will be the first public institution in the country to extract stem cells from human embryos, conceived using IVF in Australia.

The National Health and Medical Research Council has granted a licence to the Diabetes Transplant Unit at Prince of Wales Hospital and IVF Australia to produce six stem cell lines.

Up until now, researchers at the Diabetes Transplant Unit have been using stem cell lines created overseas for their work.

"Having access to new Australian stem cell lines would potentially enable us to create a plentiful supply of insulin-producing beta cells that are destroyed in patients with type 1 diabetes," said Professor Bernie Tuch, Director of the Diabetes Transplant Unit.

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