A Northern Ireland-born professor will tell a Vatican-sponsored conference in September that it is possible to use stem cells from the umbilical cords of living babies to produce insulin in diabetics and to grow blocks of human tissue for use in drug tests.

The findings will be unveiled by Colin McGuckin at the Augustinian Institute in Rome and may herald an endorsement of cord blood stem cell research by the Catholic church. Scientists at the conference will be met by Pope Benedict.

“We have been able to produce insulin-secreting cells from cord blood, which is pretty much a first,” said McGuckin, professor of regenerative medicine at the University of Newcastle. “Although people have been able to do it from embryonic stem cells, they are not transplantable because they don’t have a tissue match for the patient. Cord blood gives a big advantage,” he added.

“We are able to produce many different tissues from cord blood stem cells so we are really the first to rival embryonic stem cells,” said McGuckin. He will tell an audience, including members of the College of Cardinals, that his team can now grow blocks of liver and brain tissue for use in drug testing.

McGuckin’s findings come at a time when the church is mired in controversy over embryonic stem cell research. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo warned last month that destroying human embryos was equivalent to abortion. “Excommunication will be applied to the women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos (and to the) politicians that approve the law,” he said.

McGuckin said he hoped this would not be the church’s final position. “Ultimately we will be able to achieve the same result from non-embryonic stem cells. Some 100m children are born every year, that is an awful lot of stem cells if you want to find a tissue type that matches you.”

When embryonic cells are “expanded” for use they often turn cancerous, but McGuckin said that is not a problem with cord samples.

More than 300 parents in Ireland and Northern Ireland have paid to store their children’s cord blood in the hope that it could be used to treat illnesses in the future but the National Maternity hospital, the Rotunda and the Coombe maternity hospitals in Dublin do not support requests to collect cord blood for storage with private companies.

In June, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London published a report saying there was “insufficient evidence” to recommend the practice.

However McGuckin estimated that storing a sample of cord blood from one in every 5,000 people in each ethnic group would be enough to ensure tissue matches for the whole population.

In Britain the NHS collects up to 2,000 cord blood samples every year, but there is no such facility in the republic. The Irish Blood Transfusion Board (IBTB) has no plans to introduce a public cord blood storage system due to high costs. It claims it can find stem cell matches for most Irish patients on international registries.

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