Dr. Bernard Thébaud believes the by-products of mesenchymal stem cells — found in umbilical cord tissue and with known anti-inflammatory characteristics — could possibly heal lungs inflamed by chronic and acute asthma.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology, look at the effects of what Thébaud called “healing juices” on refractory asthma, a form of the disease that is particularly difficult to treat with inhalers.

Thébaud, a neonatal pediatrician and professor of pediatrics at the University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, said the cells and their juices are easily isolated and cultivated in the lab.

“We cultured the cells in the petri dish, and instead of taking the cells, we just took what the cells produced, the juice they were basically swimming in,” Thébaud said. “We compared that to control cells cultured the same way, but didn’t have that same effect.”

Thébaud’s team created asthma in lab mice, then injected the juices through their noses. The by-products opened airways, restored breathing and reduced inflammation in their lungs.

Thébaud began researching pediatric lung disease in 2002, adding the “exciting” discipline of stem-cell research two years later. The new study builds on some of Thébaud’s previous research into how stem cells work.

“Initially we thought you have to give the cells (to the patient) because they replace dead cells,” he said. “That’s not actually the case.”

Thébaud initially used the mesenchymal stem cells in a study of newborn lung injury, discovering “tremendous benefits” for the health of the lungs. But when his research team tried to see where those stem cells were, they couldn’t find them.

“Maybe they don’t replace dead cells. Maybe they sit there and produce juices, then vanish,” he said.

Although the research is still at an early stage, Thébaud said his hope is for a “super-inhaler” five to 10 years from now that would heal inflammation, boost healthy cells and aid in breathing. He hopes to live the researcher’s dream and drive the discovery from his lab into the clinic.

His goal “would be to have a puffer with stem cell by-products that would prevent those symptoms of asthma,” he said.

Thébaud is convinced it could work. But exactly which compounds or factors are doing the “healing” is hardly academic, and will likely form the next stage in the research.

“It is the question,” said Thébaud. “First, we have to know should we not give the cells, or can we just deliver the juices. Do we have to know what’s in there?”

That question could also delay clinical research by an additional five years, the time he estimates it would take to synthesize the factor pharmaceutically. He will be discussing the study with Health Canada to determine barriers to clinical research using just undifferentiated by-products.

Thébaud also believes the approach demonstrates “many therapeutic avenues” beyond asthma, which affects an estimated 300 million people worldwide. The potential of stem-cell research isn’t yet known.

“It’s up to us now to harness the healing powers of these cells,” he said. “We know it works in a variety of lung diseases. By extension, we know it will work in kidney, or heart or brain disease as well.

The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops has been a prominent critic of embryonic stem cell research in the United States. The Vatican conference will feature well-known critics of embryonic stem cell research, such as David Prentice of Catholic University in Washington, D.C., as well as accomplished stem cell researchers such as Harvard’s Konrad Hochedlinger, according to its program. Hochedlinger and colleagues have shown the potential for adult “induced” stem cells to display properties associated with embryonic stem cells and some discussions at the conference will look at such cells, Trafny says. NeoStem announced it would pursue a Phase II clinical trial of an adult stem cell treatment for heart attack patients earlier this year.

The Vatican Pontifical Council had earlier announced a 5-year, $1 million partnership with adult stem cell biopharmaceutical firm NeoStem and its educational foundation to research adult stem cells, examine their use and promote the cells as medical treatments.

The U.S. allowed 37 embryonic stem-cell lines for taxpayer- funded research in June, the most of any month this year, according to the National Institutes of Health. The total number of U.S.-endorsed lines now stands at 128, a decade after a curb by former President George W. Bush limited work to about 20 lines derived before Aug. 9, 2001. President Barack Obama repealed the restriction by executive order on March 11, 2009.

At issue is the use of taxpayer funds to support the work, spending that’s grown more than 16-fold since 2002. The newly approved cell lines enable scientists to study the mechanisms of more diseases and bolster a field that may someday rival the $300 billion prescription-drug market, said Mark Monane, a Needham & Co. analyst.

There is “a real opportunity to see if embryonic stem cells are going to work,” Monane said in a telephone interview from New York. Investors are still wary of the industry because of “sociopolitical risk, which is compounded upon the general risk of biotech,” he said.

Stem cells derived from embryos develop into different tissues and may lead to cures for conditions such as juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and some cancers. Geron Corp. (GERN) and Advanced Cell Technology Inc. (ACTC) are conducting three trials on therapies derived from embryonic stem cells to treat spinal-cord injuries and causes of blindness, the first clinical applications for cell-based treatments.

Doctors’ Lawsuit

The cells come from human embryos donated by patients of fertility clinics. The work is controversial because abortion opponents say destroying embryos is the equivalent of murder.

Obama’s repeal of the Bush restriction acknowledged the sensitivity surrounding the research, requiring cell-line creators to document that embryos were donated and the parents gave informed consent.

Two doctors, James Sherley of Watertown, Massachusetts, and Theresa Deisher of Seattle, sued the National Institutes of Health and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, claiming they were unfairly disadvantaged in competing for U.S. funds with researchers using embryonic stem cells. The doctors said the U.S. is violating a 1996 law called the Dickey- Wicker Amendment by funding embryonic research.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted the doctors an injunction last year, forcing the government to temporarily halt funding for embryonic projects. A panel of the U.S. Appeals Court in Washington lifted the injunction in April, restoring funding, while Lamberth considers the merits of the case. The Justice Department has asked him to dismiss the claims.

‘Cloud of Uncertainty’

The court action has left “a cloud of uncertainty over the field,” said Francis Collins, the National Institutes of Health director, in a phone interview. “Certainly anybody who’s watching that would say we’re not sure where this is going and it’s not necessarily over.”

Bush vetoed legislation in 2006 that would have locked federal support for the research into law. Democrats didn’t try to pass similar legislation when they controlled both chambers of Congress in the first two years of Obama’s presidency. An Obama defeat for re-election in 2012 would mean his Republican successor could cut off funding.

“I had one pharma executive tell me, ‘we couldn’t be more excited about the technology but we’re afraid we’ll go to jail,’” said Mike West, chief executive officer of Alameda, California-based BioTime Inc. (BTX), declining to name the individual.

Embryonic Funding Bill

Two embryonic stem-cell lines that BioTime created were among those approved for federally funded research in June. BioTime said they are the first lines designed to meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines for therapeutic use. The company submitted four more cell lines for approval last month.

Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, introduced legislation on June 24 that would turn Obama’s policy into federal law.

“Just because the House is controlled by Republicans doesn’t mean we couldn’t pass” the bill, DeGette said in a telephone interview.

Her first co-sponsor is Representative Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican, and DeGette said she had spoken “very briefly” about advancing the legislation with Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Upton supported the bill that Bush vetoed.

Avoiding Embryos

A spokeswoman for Upton didn’t respond to e-mail asking his position on the DeGette-Dent bill.

Even under Obama’s policy, 59 embryonic stem-cell lines have been denied federal funding, and spending for research using stem cells from less controversial sources such as adult stem cells and fully developed skin cells remains greater than spending on embryonic cells.

The NIH, in Bethesda, Maryland, spent $164 million on human embryonic stem-cell research in 2010, and $414 million on research using non-embryonic human stem cells, up from $10 million on embryonic research and $171 million for non-embryonic research in 2002.

“People are taking full advantage of all the different opportunities for stem-cell research,” said Story Landis, the director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, who chairs a National Institutes of Health committee that advises Collins on stem-cell policy.

Political concerns have led the NIH to adopt a rigorous process to approve embryonic stem-cell lines, said Mina Alikani, a research scientist at Tyho-Galileo Research Laboratories in Livingston, New Jersey, and a consultant to Reprogenetics Inc., a related company.

Politics in Process

Reprogenetics had two embryonic stem-cell lines it created approved for federal funding in June. Another line was denied because the consent form signed by the embryo donor didn’t meet federal standards.

“Because the entire issue of human embryonic stem cells has become politicized, you can imagine that the politics seep into this approval process as well,” Alikani said by phone.

“There’s already a lawsuit,” Alikani said. “Down the line, they may have to deal with some kind of a congressional committee coming down to check to see what they did, what the approval process entailed and how well they screened everybody, and how well they stuck to the guidelines.”

Public and congressional support for the science may be bolstered with progress creating therapies from the cells, said Matthew Vincent, director of business development at Advanced Cell Technology in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The company was to inject eye cells developed from embryonic stem cells into the first two patients in its clinical trials this week, he said.

Existing Treatments

“As patients/voters begin to see that these therapies may be useful to them, and may be useful to their families or loved ones or friends, I think it becomes harder to envision a country where embryonic stem-cell products don’t have a place,” he said.

Landis said that “the argument used to be made that there was no evidence human embryonic stem cells were being used to treat people. That’s simply no longer true.”

Early human experiments with the cells may fail, said Collins of the National Institutes of Health, adding that past breakthroughs such as organ transplants were preceded by failures, including the patients’ deaths. Failures in the first embryonic stem-cell clinical trials “should not discourage” further research, he said.

“We can never fully anticipate what happens when we make that leap into a human patient,” he said. “People need to be prepared for the fact that in this area, it’s not going to be successful from day one.”

Eye Disease

Advanced Cell has been working for about a decade on its treatments for macular degeneration, a cause of blindness, Vincent said. He called the period that included the years of federal restriction “a valley of death” that “most companies wouldn’t have survived.” Advanced Cell issued about 1.5 billion shares to raise money for research, he said.

The company plans to publish preliminary results from clinical trials this year, he said. Signs of progress may attract investment from larger pharmaceutical companies to help Advanced Cell proceed with additional trials, he said.

Geron is on firm financial footing, thanks to a portfolio of cancer drugs that are more attractive to investors than its stem-cell work, said Jane Lebkowski, the company’s chief scientific officer.

Geron Funding

Geron, based in Menlo Park, California, also won about $25 million from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a $3 billion agency the state’s voters created in 2006 in part as a response to federal restrictions on the research. BioTime has received $4.7 million from the state.

Geron has spent $145 million and almost 10 years so far developing its spinal injury therapy, Lebkowski said. The expense and long development timeline for the projects, combined with political uncertainty, dissuade investors, she said.

“The number of investors who are going into stem-cell research at all are relatively small,” she said. “Other companies, whether it’s embryonic stem cells or stem cells from adults or fetal tissue, they’re all struggling.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Wayne in Washington, DC on awayne3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Adriel Bettelheim in Washington, DC on abettelheim@bloomberg.net.

The 50-person grant-making body will pay a Los Angeles investment banker $400,000 to serve as its new part-time board chairman, pushing the combined salaries of its two top officials to nearly $1 million per year.

Santa Monica-based Saybrook Capital founder Jonathan Thomas — chosen over a former cardiologist who was willing to take the job for less than half the salary — said his pay is “reasonable” because he has the background to help the agency raise the money it needs to survive. “Without funding, everything else suffers,” Thomas said.

Voters approved a $3-billion ballot measure establishing the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in 2004. In a high-profile campaign, proponents argued that embryonic stem cell research held the key to curing cancer, Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injuries and other maladies.

More than $1 billion has already been awarded as grants or spent on agency operations, and scientists say possible cures are years if not decades away, given the painfully slow progress of medical exploration. Now, institute officials acknowledge that they plan to ask voters for at least another $3 billion in the next few years to keep the agency going.

The institute’s operating expenses are capped at 6% of its total funding. For 2010-11, it earmarked $16 million for operating expenses, according to budget reports.

Critics say lavish spending on salaries, including last month’s generous deal with Thomas, could work against the agency in a future ballot campaign.

“This salary will give their opponents a lot of ammunition,” said John Simpson of the Santa Monica-based group Consumer Watchdog. “It will haunt them.”

The other finalist for the chairman’s job was Frank Litvack, a former Cedars-Sinai Medical Center cardiologist and a medical device entrepreneur. Litvack has a record of steering medical start-ups through the regulatory and financial maze, according to his resume.

Litvack was also willing to serve as the institute’s part-time chairman for $123,000 a year, the bottom of the job’s pay range, said agency spokesman Don Gibbons.

Thomas won a 14-11 vote of the agency’s board of directors after getting letters of support from Gov. Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, all of whom are Democrats.

Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar called Thomas, whose resume shows he received a bachelor’s degree in biology, a doctorate in history from Oxford and a Yale law degree, a well-rounded candidate. “Folks can quibble about the salary; we’re not interested in getting into that fight,” Dresslar said.

Controller John Chiang, also a Democrat, was the lone statewide elected official who supported Litvack. His reason was simple. The Los Angeles doctor “is grounded in such a strong sense of civic duty and belief in CIRM’s mission of saving lives that he will serve in the position at the lowest salary being offered,” Chiang wrote in his nomination letter.

The stem cell agency, which set up shop in a trendy office across the street from AT&T Park in San Francisco, started drawing scrutiny — some say envy — from leaders in Sacramento almost from the start.

Legislators and government watchdogs criticized the program for paying its president more than twice the governor’s salary, distributing nearly $1 billion to universities with representatives on its board of directors and overselling the promise of stem cell cures.

Last year, the agency paid a consortium of scientists to review the institute’s progress so far. The report was glowing, and outgoing board Chairman Robert Klein, a Silicon Valley real estate investor who led the initiative campaign in 2004 and is sensitive to criticism of the agency he created, tried to hire the report’s lead author as his replacement.

But state leaders, including Lockyer, balked at that prospect, and the job remained open.

With his $400,008 salary, Thomas joins institute President Alan Trounson — who made $490,008 last year — high on the list of the state’s top paid, non-university employees. Others at the top, with 2010 pay ranging from $374,000 to $785,000, include prison doctors or executives for the workers’ compensation fund or the pension system.

The list, provided by the controller’s office, does not include university employees, some of whose salaries can reach seven figures.

“I think this is just an incredibly politically tone-deaf move at a time when the state is struggling to keep its head above water,” Simpson said.

Ex-state senator and former Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres, who was hired in 2009 to help defend against some of the political criticism, makes $230,000 per year as one of the institute’s vice chairmen.

By contrast, Gov. Jerry Brown makes $173,048. The director of the National Institutes of Health, which employs more than 17,000 people and invests $32.5 billion in medical research each year, makes $199,700.

Thomas, who took the job with the understanding that it would consume 80% of his work time, said the pay is “reasonable,” especially “when you factor in the work load as I intend to carry it out.”

He said as much as $250,000 of his salary would come from charitable contributions received by the agency.

In a written statement to the board after his election, Thomas told his new colleagues they were in a “communications war” in which “the world seems to be focused on internal issues instead of the grand big picture” of the institute’s mission to cure disease.

His solution? In late June the agency posted an ad for a new public relations director who will make as much as $208,520 per year.

The Denver Democrat used Craig Hospital, which is internationally acclaimed for its rehab facilities for people with spinal- cord and brain injuries, as the backdrop to introduce the Stem Cell Research Advancement Act of 2011, which she is co-sponsoring with Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa.

The bill would codify the National Institutes of Health’s guidelines for carrying out all stem-cell research and require the NIH to review its guidelines every three years and make updates as science warrants.

“What it will do once and for all is ensure that this lifesaving research will be conducted and be uninterrupted and unimpeded by political interference,” said DeGette, who has been actively working on this bill since 1999.

“There are tens of millions of Americans who could be positively affected by this research,” she said. “I talk to people all the time who have a spinal-cord injury, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s and who could receive a new outlook on their future with this science.”

Among them is Chris Chappell, a former Craig patient who has been a quadriplegic since breaking his neck in a mountain-bike accident 11 years ago.

“When you have your health, you don’t give it a second thought,” said Chappell, who works at the hospital as a graduate relations coordinator. “And when you don’t have your health, it’s your only thought.”

DeGette got legislation passed in the House and Senate in 2006 and 2007 that was similar to the Research Advancement Act of 2011. Both bills were vetoed by President George W. Bush.

Her legislation served as the framework for President Barack Obama’s 2009 executive order that overturned the Bush administration’s ban on funding for stem-cell research.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Colorado Springs Republican, has been among those opposed to embryonic-stem-cell research on the grounds that it’s unethical and immoral to use human embryos for scientific research.

His office was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

The 2011 act has been presented to Congress, and DeGette is “cautiously optimistic” that Congress can pass the legislation for a third time and get it to Obama’s desk for approval.

“Legislation is progress, and progress is good for all of us,” Chappell said. “Stem-cell research could be used as a way to restore function for patients. And if they’re functional, they become a part of society in a more progressive and positive way.”

The National Assembly voted to uphold the curbs in the second reading of the new bioethics law. Conservative legislators and the Roman Catholic Church had protested after an initial Senate vote to authorize this research.

The Senate holds its second reading of the bill in early June. If it votes again to allow embryonic stem cell research, the bill will go to a parliamentary conference committee where the National Assembly version of the bill would take precedence.

France has one of the stricter laws on embryonic stem cell research in Europe, banning it except for research with imported embryos not used for in vitro fertilization in other countries.

Opponents of embryonic stem cell research argue it is morally wrong because it manipulates or destroys human embryos. Supporters see it as a possible avenue toward new treatments for many medical conditions.

Paris Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, head of the Catholic Church in France, urged legislators this week not to liberalize the law, saying that would amount to “a regression in civilization” and open the door to “state-sponsored eugenics.”

The company plans to use the stem cells for its own research and to sell them to other laboratories that are working on ways to use stem cells to treat diseases, repaire injured organs or replace damaged tissue.

Shares of International Stem Cell rose 5 cents, or nearly 5 percent, Thursday to $1.11.

The launch of the U.S. bank came after the company received regulatory approval for its methods of collecting the donor eggs, which are known as oocytes.

The company’s scientists in 2007 developed a way to produce pluripotent stem cells from unfertilized eggs that then have the potential to become nearly any of the more than 200 types of adult cells found in the human body.

These human parthenogenetic stem cells, or hpSC’s, avoid the political and moral controversies tied to stem cells grown from human embryos. They also appear to overcome a major technical obstacle facing other types of stem cells.

Patients receiving therapies derived from embryonic stem cells must take immunosuppressive drugs like the ones given to patients who undergo donated organ transplants in order to prevent their bodies from rejecting the foreign cells.

Another category of stem cells created from adult skin cells have offered hope for avoiding rejection issues when using the cells in the donors. However, recent research by scientists at the University of California San Diego in mice raised new questions about whether those induced pluripotent cells might actually be rejected.

International Stem Cell researchers say the simpler genetic fingerprint found in their oocyte-derived stem cells should make them compatible with the immune systems of millions of potential recipients.

Batten disease, also known as neuronal ceroid lipfuscinosis or NCL, is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder in children.

Palo Alto-based StemCells in 2009 completed a Phase I safety trial in six patients with advances stages of Batten and in October 2010 started a Phase Ib trial at Oregon Health & Science University to evaluate the cells in six additional patients in earlier stages of the disease. But no eligible patients were identified or enrolled, the company said, despite “diligent efforts” by investigators.

The company said it would shelve its NCL program for now.

Out of 22 initial prospects, not one met the entry criteria, said Dr. Stephen Huhn, StemCells vice president and head of its NCL program.

“This experience has also highlighted the significant challenges the company would face in completing, within a reasonable period of time, the much larger studies in the target patient population that would ultimately be required for marketing approval,” Huhn said in a press release.

Jeffrey Kahn directs the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota Medical School. And, Jeffrey Kahn, have four million births through IVF trumped all the moral and ethical questions that were posed by the procedure?

Dr. JEFFREY KAHN (Director, Center for Bioethics): I think at the outset there was such concern about the new and uncertain technology that this proposed that people were quite afraid. But four million births later, those early issues went away, but new ones certainly came in the aftermath.

SIEGEL: As for the old issues, though, I mean, there were concerns of the potential eugenic consequences of IVF, that it wouldn’t just help people who couldn’t conceive, but it would help people who couldn’t conceive with the kind of mate they would like to conceive. That, I guess, is part of life today.

Dr. KAHN: Absolutely. And I think that technology has evolved in ways that have brought some of those concerns to light so we can now test embryos outside of the body and make decisions about which ones to implant based upon the results of those tests. And that’s what people were fearful of in 1978. The technology just didn’t exist until well into the 1990s.

SIEGEL: You spoke, though, of concerns that were anticipated back in 1978 that have developed. What would place in that category?

Dr. KAHN: Well, I think things around new combinations of parents, effectively. So now we have the ability to combine sperm from one man, egg from one woman, that resulting embryo can be implanted into a third woman. And then the child born from that pregnancy can be raised by a separate couple.

So we have, in that case, five different people involved in the creation and eventual rearing of a single child. And that, I think, wasn’t thought about in prospect quite in the way that it turned out to be a reality.

SIEGEL: There is another area of concern, which is the notion that embryos that are not implanted are frozen and whatever we do with them, are we doing that with human life? Is disposing of them disposing of human life?�That problem persists.

Dr. KAHN: Absolutely. And I think it’s something that was foreseen in some respect. But the numbers at which we create and now store the excess embryos has really gotten to the point where we need a societal conversation and maybe a policy decision about what to do with those leftover embryos. The estimates are something like a million frozen embryos left in the United States alone. And we don’t really have good plans for what ought to be done with them.

SIEGEL: What about the ethical and moral issues for doctors? That is, should they facilitate multiple births for a woman who has no apparent means of support of sextuplets or octuplets? Or is it the doctor’s job to honor the patient’s wishes and let the chips fall where they may?

Dr. KAHN: Well, it may be even a more fundamental conflict than that, in that we think about the right to have children as a basic fundamental liberty that we recognize. And so, when an individual says I’d like to have children, we don’t usually ask why or how many or what techniques do you propose to use.

And so we have the technology that allows us to create these high multiple birth pregnancies bumping up against what we think of as a quite fundamental liberty. And we really haven’t wrestled that to the ground either. And that’s an issue that started in 1978, and then certainly persists today.

SIEGEL: There’s another level of discussion of medicine, which is what do we think are the normal needs of making people well that should be covered by insurance plans – public and private. Have we settled that one when it comes to fertility treatments and IVF? Do we understand what it is that every woman or every couple is entitled to?

Dr. KAHN: No, absolutely not. In fact, in the United States there’s quite a variety of coverage when it comes to reproductive medicine techniques. So some policies will cover a few cycles of in-vitro fertilization for any one individual. Many, many policies don’t cover it at all, viewing it not as treatment of an illness or a disease but something that is rather more optional than that.

So it is far from being a settled issue when it comes to who pays and if they pay for it, how much.

SIEGEL: Jeffrey Kahn, thank you very much for talking with us today.

Dr. KAHN: My pleasure.

SIEGEL: So Jeffery Kahn, who is director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

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 British Scientist’s Work Has Enabled the Birth of Four Million Test-Tube Babies

[WSJ] Robert Edwards, a feisty British embryologist who fundamentally transformed human procreation, received the 2010 Nobel Prize in Medicine Monday for the development of clinical in vitro fertilization.

“By a brilliant combination of basic and applied medical research, [Dr.] Edwards overcame one technical hurdle after another in his persistence to discover a method that would help to alleviate infertility,” the Nobel Prize committee said in its award citation. “His contributions represent a milestone in the development of modern medicine.”

In vitro fertilization so far has enabled the birth of four million children to infertile couples world-wide.

Dr. Edwards, 85, is in failing health and was too ill to make any public response to the award, his colleagues said. “He understood this morning that he was finally awarded the prize, and he was smiling plenty when his wife, Ruth, gave him the news,” said embryologist Jacques Cohen, the senior editor of Reproductive Biomedicine Online, which Dr. Edwards founded.

The basic techniques of human embryo creation that Dr. Edwards pioneered form the technical foundation of in vitro fertilization, human cloning techniques, genetic screening of human embryos and embryonic-stem-cell research.

Working in close collaboration with gynecologist Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988, Dr. Edwards overcame entrenched political and religious hostility, as well as the disapproval of many other scientists at the time, to pioneer the basic techniques of human embryology that led to the birth of the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978.

“It took them 10 years and over 100 attempts,” Dr. Cohen said. “It demonstrates tremendous tenacity.”

Dr. Edwards and Dr. Steptoe worked with no public funding or direct research support at a time when the concept of a test-tube baby seemed the stuff of Orwellian science fiction. The birth of the first human child who began life as an embryo outside the human body made headlines world-wide and, within a few years, spawned hundreds of commercial IVF clinics.

Dr. Edwards was tireless in his support of the fledgling field. He trained a generation of leading human embryologists, founded the field’s first professional society and began a series of journals to spread its research findings. He never hesitated to debate the implications of his work. Despite its widespread acceptance today as an infertility treatment, these embryo techniques have never strayed far from tabloid headlines or political controversy.

“He was one of the first scientists to encounter moral opposition to his work at a research level,” said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan. “They were working against grave concerns from many quarters that it was not right to create life outside the body, that it was risky and dangerous and it was not part of God’s will to let the infertile become fertile.”

“Most of the time, the things that win the Nobel Prize are esoteric,” said Marcelle Cedars at the University of California, San Francisco, who is incoming president of the Society of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility.

“This was something that had immediate real-world applications,” she said. “It has touched the lives of so many people in such a profound way.”

 

Write to Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com