March 27, 2009

Reaction to Obama's order:
a snapshot from StemConn '09

Speakers and attendees at Connecticut’s international stem cell research symposium weigh in on the president’s decision to lift the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Haifan Lin (left foreground), director of the Yale Stem Cell Center, spoke at StemCONN '09. Yale’s program has been a primary recipient of state funding since 2007, when the state allocated $100 million over 10 years for human embryonic stem cell research. Scientists at the University of Connecticut and Wesleyan University also received state support for stem cell research.

When a group of international stem cell experts gathered at StemConn ’09, a research symposium held at the Omni Hotel March 23 and 24, a two-week-old executive order signed by President Barack Obama was very much on their minds.

While the order, which repealed a Bush administration ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research on lines isolated after August ’01, wasn’t a subject on the program, it was a hot topic among speakers on two panels and attendees alike.

Panelist Michael Werner, a partner at Holland & Knight LLP, said the impact of Obama’s executive order is to “remove politics from scientific decision making.” He predicted a lot of aggressive competition for National Institutes of Health (NIH) money in the coming months, but said Connecticut researchers are well positioned because they already have research teams and an infrastructure in place.

This view was seconded by Diane Krause, M.D., Ph.D., associate director of the Yale Stem Cell Center and professor of laboratory medicine, pathology and cell biology. She added that Connecticut researchers at Yale, the University of Connecticut and Wesleyan University, have already embarked on research projects and have pilot data available for their grants to the NIH.

Another speaker, Lorraine Young, Ph.D., professor of molecular embryology and director of the Wolfson Centre for Stem Cells, Tissue Engineering and Modeling at the University of Nottingham, U.K., said Bush may inadvertently have done stem cell researchers a favor with his funding ban by triggering a “catalytic effect” that resulted in a robust collaborative spirit among researchers and financial support from unanticipated sources.

Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosurgery Eugene Redmond Jr., M.D., called Obama’s executive order a “great move” but noted that it created no new funding. “It righted a wrong, but no more than that,” he said.

Redmond, an audience member, recalled a similar event in the early 1990s. Then-President Ronald Reagan banned federal funding for fetal tissue transplantation research, prompting private foundations to provide money to keep the work going. “Things initially got worse after the government changed its policy under [Bill] Clinton,” Redmond said, “because the private sector said, ‘Great, we don’t have to do this anymore. The government will pick it up.’ ” Redmond worries that a similar mindset might prevail today, and, given the ailing economy, he questions the level of financial support the government will be able to provide.

Despite some of the concerns expressed and the uncertainties created by the country’s financial crisis, panelist Laura Grabel, Ph.D., professor of science in society at Wesleyan University, offered a reason for optimism. She joked that she knew the field of stem cell research had mainstream support when she heard Click and Clack, the two hosts of the National Public Radio show Car Talk, discuss how they planned to use automotive stem cells to rebuild a transmission.

—Jennifer Kaylin

Photo by John Curtis

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