By Shoukhrat Mitalipov and Daniel M. Dorsa

This month, Oregon Health & Science University was honored to help advance the possibility of therapies aimed at curing several serious diseases and conditions, including Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, some genetic diseases and possibly even spinal cord injuries.

Several years of studies in cells from both monkeys and humans allowed us to convert human skin cells into stem cells. Our procedure, based on the advancements of several other labs and our own, involves inserting a skin cell into the cytoplasm of an unfertilized egg cell that has had its nucleus removed. In the following days, this allowed for the production of stem cells capable of becoming any cell type in the body. When fully developed, the possibility of these miraculous cells to replace diseased or damaged tissue in the body is exciting and encouraging.

However, progress in this highly promising field of research conducted at our institution and others will only move forward at a snail's pace unless certain restrictions faced by scientists throughout our country are addressed.

Under current law, federal funding can only be used to study existing stem cells, which come from fertilized human embryos, many of which are the product of unused fertilized eggs from fertility clinics. Labs that receive government funding cannot produce stem cells through egg fertilization, nor are they allowed to produce stem cells using the method we published this month and explained above.

Here is where the real issue exists: My colleagues who also urgently wish to advance stem cell therapies cannot use federal funds to work with the cells we and others develop through private funding, even if they had no hand whatsoever in the development itself.

This needs to change.

In the wake of this month's news, President Barack Obama and Congress must re-evaluate current policy and recognize the need for our laws to evolve as new scientific data is developed.

We embrace many of the controls in place to respect the sanctity of life and strongly agree that no federal funding should be used to create human clones. Cloning a human is an idea that we and the vast majority of scientists throughout the world find repugnant.

However, federal funding for studies of stem cells from various sources must be less restrictive. This will allow cautious progress in labs under the public eye. This is also a necessity in developing treatments for countless serious diseases and conditions where human cells or tissues are damaged beyond repair.

The time to revisit these overly restrictive laws is now. We cannot allow illogical roadblocks to remain in place while countless patients suffer with no relief in sight.



Shoukhrat Mitalipov is an OHSU scientist and the lead researcher on the skin cell/stem cell project. Daniel M. Dorsa is an OHSU scientist and the senior vice president for research.