ALL STEM CELLS

Stem-cell patents

Source : Nature 2011 Oct 20
Procedures using stem cells derived from human embryos cannot be patented, the European Court of Justice ruled on 18 October. The judgment — which agrees with the court’s preliminary ruling in March — has dismayed some stem-cell scientists. Oliver Brüstle,
director of the Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology at the University of Bonn in Germany, called the decision a setback for biomedical research. His 1997 patent of a technique to generate nerve cells from human embryonic stem-cell lines sparked the legal debate.
See go.nature.com/oxbnsf for more.