A member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who helped draft the mainland's first regulations on clinical trials of stem cell treatments says the authorities are considering centralising such treatment and research in 50 hospitals and institutes.
Dr Wu Zuze said yesterday the Ministry of Health planned to select 50 hospitals and institutes as research bases. Other hospitals or research institutes that wanted to conduct clinical trials could only do so inside the 50 bases after their applications had been approved by the health authorities.
'A guidance note on clinical trials involving stem cell treatments and administrative rules on research bases have already been finished by the Ministry of Health and are expected to be released soon,' Wu said.
The move is part of a year-long crackdown on unscrupulous hospitals that had been cashing in on desperate patients with unproven therapies.
Launched by the ministry in January, the crackdown included a six-month ban on registering new stem cell projects.
Many foreigners have flocked to mainland hospitals for expensive but untested stem cell treatments that are offered far more freely than in the United States and other Western countries. Experts estimate several hundred hospitals and clinics are providing such treatments to mainland and foreign patients.
Ministry of Health spokesman Deng Haihua said in Beijing yesterday that although the ban on registering new stem cell projects had expired last week, unscrupulous hospitals and clinics would not be able to launch unproven treatments as easily as before.