By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter


South Korea’s Catholic church plans to donate 10 billion won ($9.61 million) for adult stem cell research to counter the burgeoning studies on embryonic stem cells.

Toward that end, the Seoul Diocese yesterday set up a committee to allocate the funds and appointed Bishop Yeom Soo-jung to head it.

``We decided to establish this committee to boost adult stem cell research that will treat hard-to-cure diseases practically. We hope our efforts will mark a turning point to wash away a recent tendency of making light of life, as shown by embryonic stem cell experiments,’’ Yeom said.

He added the 10 billion won is the largest amount ever contributed by any Catholic church in any country for adult stem cell research.

The Catholic church has been opposed to stem cell experiments with embryos, pioneered here by Seoul National University professor Hwang Woo-suk, because of the church’s belief that embryos are human lives.

Hwang stole the global stage early last year by announcing his team created a cloned human embryo for the first time in history and extracted a stem cell line from it.

This year, the 52-year-old surprised the world once again by harvesting patient-specific stem cells, which are genetically tailored to patients with critical diseases or disabilities.

Catholics have criticized Hwang and his attention-grabbing study since his work uses human eggs and destroys embryos to harvest stem cell batches.

But adult stem cells can be grown harmlessly from adults or the umbilical cord, which is usually discarded after the birth of a baby.

Stem cells, the master cells from which other cell types are made, can be categorized into two kinds according to their source _ adult and embryonic.

Embryonic stem cells are derived from embryos and have the potential to become any cell or tissue of a human body such as bone, skin or blood.

By contrast, adult stem cells are harvested from the fetus, child, adult and umbilical cord blood and typically create specific cell type similar to their tissue of origin.

For example, muscle stem cells produce muscle cells. But recently, scientists have found adult stem cells that have the ability to change into other kinds of cells.

voc200@koreatimes.co.kr