Clinic to Import Fetal Tissue From Russia : Medicine: Surgical team will also come to Santa Barbara facility and demonstrate transplants to treat diabetes. Research curbs have frustrated U.S. scientists.

A research clinic in Santa Barbara has entered into an agreement to import fetal tissue from Russia to transplant into diabetics.

The agreement by the Sansum Clinic reflects U.S. researchers’ frustrations over difficulties in obtaining fetal tissue for research purposes, despite President Clinton’s recent lifting of a moratorium on the use of such tissue. This is the first agreement of its kind between U.S. researchers and Russian authorities.

“With the current political situation, it will take a long time, at least three or four years, before we reach a point where we could have fetal tissue banks here,” Sansum researcher Dr. Bent Formby said Tuesday. “This way, we can get all the tissue we need and could treat hundreds of patients annually.”

In the first stage of the agreement, a team of Russian surgeons is scheduled to visit Sansum in about six weeks, bringing enough frozen tissue to treat 40 patients. During their one-week stay, the Russian surgeons will transplant tissues into 25 patients to teach Sansum residents their techniques.

Sansum researchers, headed by Formby, plan to transplant tissues in an additional 15 patients using techniques developed in Santa Barbara.

The fetal cell transplants are aimed at Type 1, or insulin-dependent, diabetics. The disorder, which affects almost 1 million Americans, occurs when insulin-producing cells in the pancreas are destroyed by the immune system, leaving the body unable to regulate the use and storage of sugars found in food.

The immediate symptoms of diabetes can be controlled by injections of insulin, but that does not control the long-term complications of the disorder, which include blindness, nerve damage and cardiovascular problems. Pancreas transplants are helpful, but they are expensive and fraught with potential complications.

Researchers believe that transplanting only the insulin-secreting cells, called islets, from the pancreas--especially from fetal pancreases--will reduce the use of insulin injections and minimize diabetic complications. Currently, however, only 221 fetal cell transplants for diabetes have been performed outside China and Russia.

Moscow surgeons perform more than 2 million abortions annually and networks have been established to collect and preserve the healthy tissue.

Russian surgeons have performed more than 3,000 fetal cell transplants for diabetes, but their results have not been published in Western journals. James Stevens, a Geneva-based attorney who helped negotiate the agreement for Sansum, said that the Russian procedures have been quite successful, reducing the recipients’ insulin requirements by up to 90%.

The Russian team is expected to disclose details of its techniques and the results from its trials when it visits Sansum.

The cost of the Russian surgeons’ visit to the United States, as well as that for collection of the tissue--expected to total about $5,000 per patient--will be passed on to transplant recipients. The cost of the actual transplant is expected to add another $5,000. Most fetal tissue transplants are considered experimental procedures and are not covered by insurance.

The first recipients of the transplants will be diabetics who are already being treated at Sansum. As the program is expanded later, the clinic will begin to accept patients from outside as well.