Federal funding for UCLA stem cell research continues after court decision in ongoing case of Sherley v. Sebelius*
By Naheed Rajwani
May 4, 2011 12:34 a.m.
Embryonic stem cell research at UCLA will continue to receive federal funding as part of a decision made by a federal court of appeals last week.
The case, Sherley v. Sebelius, is the latest development in an ongoing battle between the U.S. federal government and the judicial system regarding stem cell research.
“(The decision) preserves the status quo, so government funding can continue,” said Russell Korobkin, a UCLA law professor and author of “Stem Cell Century: Law and Policy for a Breakthrough Technology.” “It also encourages the plaintiffs to continue to press their case, so in some ways, this decision is prolonging the stalemate.”
UCLA received $385,000 in federal grants for human embryonic stem cell research in 2009. In 2010, the same year in which the preliminary injunction was issued, federal funding dropped to about $300,000.
This funding is vital to UCLA’s ability to continue human embryonic stem cell research, said Jerome Zack, an associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute.
“If they were forced to cancel (this funding), then we would be forced to stop our work,” Zack said. “We would have to lay off all of the employees working on the project, because there would be no support for them.”
A pair of scientists who research adult stem cells brought the lawsuit in 2010 to block the National Institutes of Health from funding research that used human embryonic stem cells.
The scientists argued that the research violates the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, a 1995 appropriations rider that bars federal funding for research in which a human embryo is destroyed.
In August 2010, a district court granted a preliminary injunction to halt all federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research while the case was under review. The court concluded that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in showing that the guidelines for the research violated the Dickey-Wicker Amendment.
The University of California filed a motion to intervene in the case, stating that the block on funding was disrupting the university’s funded grants and the processing of grant applications under review by the National Institutes of Health.
The university also stated that the injunction was a threat to ongoing programs to educate physicians and physician-researchers.
The federal government opposed the decision to stop federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and filed an appeal.
In September 2010, the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals issued a stay order, which temporarily blocked the preliminary injunction and allowed for federal funding to resume while the case was under review.
One of the judges dissented in the case, so it is not set in stone that a future ruling will be in favor of continued funding for stem cell research, Korobkin said.
Embryonic stem cells were first reported in 1998, said Amander T. Clark, a UCLA stem cell researcher and associate professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology. Since then, the cells have been used in labs around the world.
Zack’s lab, for example, focuses on ways to convert embryonic stem cells into blood-forming stem cells and then into different types of blood cells. His team plans to use this research to improve and perhaps correct defects within the circulatory system or potentially infectious diseases by way of genetic engineering.
The research is still in its early stages and is not ready to go to clinical trials yet, but there are still interesting directions to pursue, Zack said.
Federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research has been continued, and, under this decision, research will continue as well, said Steven Peckman, associate director at the Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA.
Clark said the technology for embryonic stem cell research should not be overstated by scientists.
“We see that it has a lot of promise for the future and that it needs sustained federal funding,” she said.
A final decision for Sherley v. Sebelius is still pending.
