Brussels/London: Europe’s top court has opened the door to certain stem cell patents in the European Union by ruling that an organism incapable of developing into a human being is not a human embryo and may be patented.
Thursday’s judgement by the European Court of Justice was made following a case brought in Britain by US company International Stem Cell Corporation over whether it could patent processes covering the use of human egg cells.
The case is significant because three years ago the EU court ruled that stem cell research involving human embryos could not be patented, a decision condemned at the time by some scientists as a “devastating” blow for medical research in Europe.
Although work on stem cell therapies is still experimental, researchers believe they could treat a range of diseases from Parkinson’s to blindness. But excessively strict restrictions on obtaining patents could hobble their commercialisation.
California-based International Stem Cell, however, uses processes based on unfertilised human eggs and the EU court ruled that such eggs should be excluded from the ban on embryo-derived stem cell patents, if it was proved they could not develop into human beings.
“The mere fact that a parthenogenetically-activated human ovum commences a process of development is not sufficient for it to be regarded as a ‘human embryo’,” the court ruled.
The court said it left it to British judges to determine whether the specific organisms used by the US company lacked the inherent capacity of developing into human beings and therefore met these criteria.
Stem cell research has long been controversial. Critics argue that using embryonic stem cells is wrong because obtaining these cells involves the destruction of embryos which are left over from fertility treatment.
Scientists contend the research is justified, since the embryonic stem cells they use are cell lines derived from original surplus eggs that can be maintained indefinitely. While adult stem cells are also being investigated as potential medicines, they are less flexible than embryonic ones.
