It was approximately one year ago that President Barack Obama lifted former president George W Bush’s ban on embryonic stem cell research. Earlier this year, legislation (The Stem Cell Research Advancement Act, H.R. 4808) was introduced to amend the Public Health Service Act, which would codify Obama’s executive authorising research on human stem cells (including embryonic stem cells).
Since Obama reversed the existing limits, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has approved 43 stem cell lines (funding was restricted to 21 cell lines by Bush), demonstrating the extent to which it has impacted the potential advancement of stem cell research.
Codification means the industry will benefit from cell line diversity and investment as a result of renewed stability in the future of stem cell research. Having the confidence to invest and move forward is what Dr Mark A Magnuson of the Vanderbilt Center for Stem Cell Biology has been waiting for after progress was thrown off for six to nine months.
"An issue with the new Obama policy is that it has been disruptive," says Magnuson. "Even though we now have access to many new lines, which is something we needed, it’s also had the negative consequence of making it impossible to know with certainty whether we could continue working on the Bush-era cell lines."
To read the rest of my latest feature, go to Pharmaceutical Technology.
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