China launches primate centre to broaden medical use of monkeys

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Nature 424, 239 - 240 (17 July 2003);

doi:10.1038/424239a

 

China launches primate centre to broaden medical use

of monkeys

 

DAVID CYRANOSKI

 

[TOKYO] Biologists in China plan to capitalize on the

region's easy access to primates to set up a global

resource for disease research.

 

The centre, based at Sun Yat-sen University in

Guangzhou, southern China, will use locally obtained

primates to build up a library of stem cells. It will

also develop large colonies of transgenic primates for

use as models of human disease.

 

Together, Sun Yat-sen University and local government

have invested about US$1 million in the project, which

is tentatively named the Center for Stem Cell Biology

and Tissue Engineering.

 

The centre is being established in close cooperation

with Bruce Lahn, a geneticist at the University of

Chicago, Illinois. It aims to explore areas in which

the use of primates has so far been limited, such as

neurological disease and developmental biology. In the

United States and Europe, primate research in these

areas is restricted because of the high cost and

lengthy life cycle of the animals, as well as

criticism from animal-rights activists.

 

Cost should not be a problem for the new centre, says

its director Peng Xiang, a former postdoctoral student

of Lahn's. US researchers often pay US$5,000 per

animal, but the centre will pay about one-tenth of

that, Xiang says, obtaining several hundred rhesus

macaques and crab-eating monkeys from a primate

breeding centre nearby.

 

Xiang is also looking at obtaining inbred animals from

an island south of China, although this may prove to

be controversial as the removal of monkeys from the

wild has upset conservationists (see Nature 417,

684–687; 2002).

 

Lahn believes that the centre could redefine primate

research. " China's unique advantages in the field

could propel it into a position of international

leadership, " he says.

 

If so, it would bring many experiments, currently done

in mice, one step closer to humans. " Primate research

has tremendous promise for bridging the gap between

what's known about the biology of mice and what we

want to know about human disease, " says Gerald

Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania, who has pioneered transgenic and cloning

studies in primates.

 

Xiang argues that many experiments using mouse models

have been inconclusive because of the great

dissimilarity between humans and mice.

 

Already, 15 researchers are working at the new centre.

According to Lahn, researchers will start with 100–200

monkeys this autumn and build to three times that

number over the next few years. The founders of the

centre say that they will adhere to Western-level

research ethics, although doubts have sometimes been

expressed about China's ability to police such ethics

(see 'Are China's bioethics under control?').

 

The centre is expected to build on some of Schatten's

pioneering work in primates, including efforts to

clone a rhesus monkey (C. Simerly et al. Science 300,

297; 2003), and a gene-transfer experiment that

achieved low-level expression of a jellyfish gene for

a green fluorescent protein in another rhesus monkey

(A. W. S. Chan, K. Y. Chong, C. Martinovich, C.

Simerly and G. Schatten Science 291, 309–312; 2001).

 

According to Xiang, the centre will try to improve on

previous transgenic experiments by using several

different viruses to introduce the genes. The viruses

will either be allowed to invade a newly fertilized

egg on their own or will be injected directly into an

egg, as the researchers look for the best way to

create primates with active transgenes. The resulting

animals could be used as models for neurodegenerative

diseases such as Huntington's, Xiang says. The centre

will also study the function of developmental genes

such as hedgehog, focusing in particular on their role

in brain development.

 

Another of the centre's aims is to establish itself as

a global source of primate stem cells of various types

and stages of development. The supply of primate stem

cells will " be valuable in a few years, when clinical

trials of stem-cell therapies are closer to reality

and real preclinical work is necessary " , says Daniel

Salomon of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla,

California.

 

But Salomon doubts whether the centre's plan to create

a pool of inbred monkeys will provide a useful model

for disease research. " Inbred mice have been

extraordinarily useful for basic studies, " he says,

" but the translation to human patients that are

everything but inbred has been problematic. "

 

The new centre's managers are already wary of ethical

charges that may be levelled against their work. They

have backed away, for example, from an earlier plan to

grow tissue from human cells in primates for

implantation back into humans. Such

'xenotransplantation' is seen by many experts as

dangerous because of the risks of interspecies

infection.

 

© 2003 Nature Publishing Group

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