In the United States, presidential mandates and legal hurdles are major obstacles to funding and carrying out research involving hESCs. State governments–especially California’s–and a few private foundations are scrambling to fill the gap. Still, a new generation of stem-cell scientists is forced to contend with restrictions that go well beyond what other early-career scientists–and established stem-cell scientists–must face.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines limit the use of federal funds to work done on hESC lines developed before the 9 August 2001 presidential mandate. Those restrictions include the use of NIH infrastructure–incubators, petri dishes, culture media, and even office supplies. Many of the NIH cell lines are difficult to grow and were developed from mouse feeder cells, making them unusable for clinical applications. Despite those restrictions, NIH continues to play a dominant funding role even for trainees and researchers whose ultimate interests lie beyond research governed by NIH regulations.

State funding is a boon to researchers in states such as California, and private funding offers other opportunities, but NIH funds still form the core of many stem-cell research programs.

Despite the funding obstacles and the political challenges, researchers encourage trainees to enter the field if they’re passionate about the science and they’ve found an interesting question that they want to address. These scientists are optimistic that the political climate will change with future elections and the evolution of public opinion–or that scientific progress will make some of the ethical objections obsolete.

But even with this optimism many of the cutting-edge innovations in embryonic stem-cell research are coming from projects that are not funded by the U.S. government and that fall outside the NIH guidelines, leaving many federally funded researchers watching from the sidelines–and waiting.

However, stem-cell researchers are doing the best they can with what they have, but everyone is looking for a brighter day, trying to hold on until they have full freedom to do what the science tells what they need to be doing.

Stem-cell funding sources at a glance (from a 28 July 2006 article in Science)

State funding:

* California: $3 billion over 10 years
* Connecticut: $100 million over 10 years
* Illinois: $15 million via executive order
* Maryland: $15 million this year, as a start
* New Jersey: $5 million this year
* Wisconsin: $5 million to attract companies–also involved in building a $375 million facility at WiCell

Private funding:

* Michael Bloomberg: $100 million to Johns Hopkins University
* Starr Foundation: $50 million to Rockefeller University, Cornell University, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
* Broad Foundation: $25 million to the University of Southern California
* Ray and Dagmar Dolby: $16 million to UC San Francisco
* Stowers Medical Institute: $10 million to Kevin Eggan and Chad Cowan at Harvard
* Leon D. Black: $10 million to Mt. Sinai School of Medicine
* Private donors: almost $40 million to Harvard Stem Cell Institute

NIH funding (estimated FY 2006)

* $609 million for stem cells–all types
* $38 million for hESC research

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