Funding stopped for human ESC research (Image: David Scharf/SPL)

Update: US-backed stem cell research set to end in months

Editorial: Overturn stem cell injunction

Confusion reigns in labs across the US, as biologists struggle to digest a court ruling that appears to freeze all federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells (ESCs).


On Monday, the US District Court in Washington DC granted an injunction to two scientists who claim that President Barack Obama’s policy to widen funding for research using ESCs is illegal. The ruling applies until the case has been tried – at a date that has not yet been set.

However, the 15-page ruling, issued by Judge Royce Lamberth, goes further than simply blocking the Obama administration’s loosening of restrictions imposed by President George Bush. The injunction seems to apply to any federal funding for research on human ESCs – even on the 21 cell lines that were approved for use under the Bush administration.

Biologists working on human ESCs are aghast. “Everyone believed that this was a settled issue,” says Evan Snyder of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, California, who fears that research will now “grind to a halt”.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which in July 2009 issued new guidelines to implement Obama’s policy, declined to comment. Officials referred queries to the Department of Justice, which is still reviewing the implications. It is unclear whether the ruling will simply block new grants, or require scientists to halt research that is already under way.

Dickey-Wicker Amendment

Lamberth’s ruling hinges on the interpretation of a law called the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. Since 1996, this amendment has been appended to the annual bill approving the NIH’s budget. It bans the use of federal funding for research that causes the destruction of a human embryo.

That clearly rules out the use of federal funds to make new lines of ESCs. Controversially, Lamberth argues that it also applies to research on previously established cell cultures. “Because ESC research requires the derivation of ESCs, ESC research is research in which an embryo is destroyed,” his ruling states.

Ironically, in October 2009 Lamberth declined to hear the case, originally brought by a coalition of groups including Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which encourages infertile couples to adopt “spare” embryos from IVF clinics.

But in June this year an appeals court ruled that two of the plaintiffs, biologists James Sherley of the Boston Biomedical Research Institute in Watertown, Massachusetts, and Theresa Deisher of AVM Biotechnology in Seattle, were entitled to sue because the expansion of research on ESCs could affect their own ability to compete for research grants. Sherley and Deisher work on adult stem cells, and oppose the use of ESCs on moral grounds.

Overturn the amendment?

The Obama administration could continue to fight the case through the courts. Alternatively, it may pressure Democrats in Congress to overturn the Dickey-Wicker amendment.

Until the issue is resolved, biologists working on ESCs may be forced to fall back on private funding, or grants from agencies in US states that have backed the research.

The largest of these agencies, the San Francisco-based California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, issued a statement criticising the ruling and promising to continue its support for work on ESCs. “The decision is a deplorable brake on all stem cell research,” says Alan Trounson, president of the CIRM.