2010-04-28
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that four additional lines of
human embryonic stem cells are now eligible for federal funding, including the
most widely used line.
The determination by the NIH should alleviate mounting concerns among
researchers that the new policy instituted by the Obama administration was
hindering research because it was unclear how many of the original 21 lines
approved by the Bush administration would be approved by the guidelines and
whether researchers who had been working on existing lines could continue to
work with them. The NIH announcement
assures these scientists that their research can now go forward.
In March of 2009, President Obama issued an executive
order that allowed many of the approximately 700 existing cell lines to be
eligible for federal funding. The previous policy implemented by President
George W. Bush had allowed federal dollars to pay for some stem cell research, but
only for the 21 cell lines that had existed prior to August 2001. In the years
since, scientists have learned to make better stem lines, but those did not
qualify for federal funds.
In July of last year, the NIH released guidelines that
established policy and procedures under which the NIH would fund extramural stem cell research. While the guidelines reflected
several provisions advocated by the scientific community, including ASH, they
also stirred controversy because it appeared that they would have made the
stem cell lines approved by the Bush Administration ineligible for further
funding. As explained at the time by Dr.
Raynard Kington, acting NIH director, the older stem lines would be approved if
they were created under conditions that met the spirit of the new rules. The
crucial test would be whether the embryos used to create the stem cell lines
were created solely for reproductive purposes and whether donors freely
consented to their use in research. NIH officials
allowed researchers with existing federal grants to continue to work on the old
lines, regardless of whether they had been approved under the new policy. But
any research involving new grants could use only lines approved under the new
policy, leaving some researchers unsure of
how to proceed.
Over the last year, NIH officials have argued that they were approving the
lines as quickly as they could and were awaiting applications from previously
excluded lines, including popular lines derived by researchers at the
University of Wisconsin.
The new NIH approval specifically affects four Wisconsin lines known as H7,
H9, H13, and H14. H9 is the most widely used, accounting for 37 percent of all
published research in the field.
According to NIH Director Francis Collins, the approval brought to 64
the number of lines that have been approved so far under the new policy, and the
number will continue to grow. More than 100 additional applications are
pending.
ASH has long been
active in supporting
stem cell research and a vocal proponent of the use of regenerative
medicine to cure disease and alleviate suffering. The Society was one of the
first physician organizations to support embryonic stem cell research. ASH
strongly supports federal funding for all avenues of stem cell research under
NIH federal research guidelines and with appropriate public oversight. ASH’s policy statement in support of stem
cell research can be found online.
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