Cell-based cures could energize biotech in Europe.

This article offers a look at the establishment of regenerative medicine-based biotechnology companies in Europe. While Europe is a latecomer to the biotechnology industry compared to the United States, the field of regenerative medicine, the art and science of repairing shattered organs, could spur development of the industry. CellFactors, in Cambridge, Great Britain, has gone one product made of living cells--for Parkinson's disease--and another extracted from cell culture--to encourage bone re growth. But with a burn rate of $150,000 a month and just $3 million in funding, it can not afford to push ahead with both programs. For now, CellFactors plans to place its extract Skeletax for bone re growth into clinical trials in early 2002. Other promising therapies come from the patient. In what is known as autologous grafting, cells are taken from the patient, manipulated in a laboratory and re implanted. The idea, pioneered 15 years ago in the United States, have become popular in Europe, where many countries classify self-grafts as non drugs. Even so, Modex Therapeutics, in Lausanne, Switzerland, has volunteered to stage human trials for its autologous skin replacement, EpiDex, to win over doctors, insurers and regulators. Early results are promising; final data is due in 2002. What about stem cells for regenerative medicine? Research on embryonic stem cells is far from the clinic, and perhaps a bit farther now that U.S. President George W. Bush has limited U.S. research to colonies of cells that have already been founded. The governments of Europe, however, are offering warmer support for embryonic stem-cell research. But that is only half the story. Stem cells remain in the realm of pure research, the fruits of which will help all companies, everywhere. The patents that arise will simply go to the highest bidder, probably in licensing agreements--on both sides of the Atlantic. Only then will bio technologists begin turning ideas into products.