Our in-studio guest: Dr. Daniel Besser, stem cell researcher, Max-Delbrück-Centrum, Berlin

Have we gone too far in researching controversial stem cells? And will President Obama's decision to allow research to continue have an influence on German scientific progress?



DW-TV: Stem cell research continues to be very promising, but we're still waiting for it to make a concrete impact on medicine. How soon do you think we can expect treatments?


Daniel Besser: It's very difficult to put a concrete time on things like that. These are scientific developments in the future, and you don't really know how long it will take. We think about five, ten years before we will have concrete therapies coming out of using these undifferentiated pluripotent stem cells--without giving a concrete date. We have stem cell therapies already existing in terms of blood replacement and so on and so forth, so there will be more stem-cell-based therapies coming in the near future, based on somatic cells, but also based on, at some point hopefully on embryonic cells or pluripotent cells.


DW-TV: You work with embryonic stem cells, and the ethics debate surrounding them has raged for ten years now. It probably will not die down any time soon. Do you think that alternative stem cell technology like we saw in our report will be able to replace this at some point?


Daniel Besser: I mean, we're definitely very excited about developments like this, and this has been, a lot of researchers in the world have been pushing into this kind of other sources of pluripotent undifferentiated cells, which can replace embryonic stem cells. We are not there yet, we are not 100% sure that, for example the cells from Tübingen or also, the well, discussed, induced pluripotent cells which come from body cells of every patient, so we would be able, we would in a position from every patient, to have a tailored pluripotent cell, we're not 100% there yet, so that we can really say these are the same as the bona fide embryonic stem cells which are derived from blastocysts.


DW-TV: As we said, President Barack Obama recently freed up federal funding in the US for embryonic stem cell research. What kind of impact do you think that will have on the field as a whole?


Daniel Besser: On the field as a whole, I think this is a very positive impact, it takes away this black or dark corner of embryonic stem cell research a little bit . Because we get now in the States the allowance also to use public funds again for newer stem cells. It will not have a direct impact on laws in other countries, since they are independent states, so they will not right away follow whatever comes from the United States. But overall, I think this is a very positive thing for the international stem cell research community.


DW-TV: Are we running the danger of seeing a brain-drain to the U.S. of stem-cell researchers because of the looser regulations?


Daniel Besser: The brain drain is more also a question of how much money is spent on research. So America still has to pick up what they spent on research that went down very strongly during the Bush administration and is not back to where it used to be. So brain drain for Germany or for the European countries is also a question of how much money is spent in Europe for research and how much is spent in America. So in the moment I don't see a problem of brain drain just because of the public funds.


DW-TV: All right, Daniel Besser, thanks very much for joining us here today.


Interview: Heather deLisle