GRANADA, Spain (AFP) - Spain is stepping up research into stem cells, on which hang the hopes of millions of sufferers of Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's and diabetes, opening only Europe's third publicly-funded stem cell bank at Granada.

The facility follows in the footsteps of Sweden and Britain, which already have similar facilities in Stockholm and London.

"We have been working 14 to 18 hours a day for three months to bring this into operation and we are going to continue for as long as it takes," says Doctor Angel Concha, head of the bank located in Hospital Universitario Virgen de las Nieves in Granada.

Set up with 765,000 euros ($950,000) of funding from the Andalucian regional authorities in the south of Spain the Granada stem cells bank will work in close cooperation with its British and Swedish counterparts.

The Swedish plant has already agreed to supply for free a first stock of cell lines to the Spanish facility.

The ethical debate which surrounds such research explains the slow rate of progress made by this pioneering sector of medical research.

The cells with the widest use are those taken from human embryos from which
can be made "components of the human body," in the words of diabetes specialist Bernat Soria, who is one of the scientists working on the Granada project.

Neurones, insulin, cartilage are just some corporal elements which can be produced from the stem cells of human embryos.

Spanish legislation on research into uses which can be made of the embryos is among the most forward-looking in Europe, despite the opposition of the influential Catholic and conservative establishment.

But it remains behind that of Britain, the first country in the world to allow therapeutic cloning, that is, create embryos solely for research purposes.

Embryonic stem cells, as opposed to adult stem cells, have the best potential of developing into a wide range of tissue types.

In the case of Granada, the stem cells will be taken left over the test tube-assisted reproduction - once a legal rumpus over what extent responsibility for the procedure lies with central and regional government respectively.

While that issue is thrashed out Concha is keen to stress the time which he can gain from British research already carried out.

The British stem cells bank, set up in September 2002, is still not open for business, owing to the lengthy process of setting various technical and ethical protocols.

Doctor Concha says that could prove a bonus to his facility.

"We will benefit because we are ourselves going to ecploit those protocols."

A further reason for the delay is that the process of developing the cell lines via laboratory reproduction takes a year at the very least and the British scientists want to work on material produced in their own facility.

Sharing stem cell lines and methodology and even the harmonization of instruments employed in the research process should help to narrow the differences in the results obtained from Swedish, British and Spanish samples, explains Concha and to meet the scientific test of reproducibility, which is essential to validate any scientific discovery.

The first stem cell line was created in 1998 in the United States.

Since then, President George W. Bush has severely cut back public funding for stem cell research.

According to Concha, some countries are holding back only because "many are waiting to see what happens with those who have already started out so they don't make the same mistakes while saving on their resources."