But before researchers can benefit from new federal dollars, the Obama administration will have to clear at least two barriers to federal funding.
The simplest to reverse will be President George W. Bush's policy statement, in a speech on Aug. 9, 2001, that limited federal funds to human cell lines already in use at the time of his pronouncement - that is, whose source embryos had already been destroyed.
Although the administration counted about 60 cell lines in that category at the time, scientists say only 21 have proved useful. Of those, some don't grow well in labs; others have unwanted genetic anomalies, viruses or animal components. And most were derived from white people, so any discoveries they yield might not apply across the population.
Researchers working without federal dollars have since developed more than 400 human embryonic stem cell lines, according to one count published two years ago. But none is eligible for federal funding, at least not until Obama says otherwise.
"Most people think the Bush policy was an executive order. It was just a speech," said Amy Comstock Rick, president of the Washington-based Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, comprising patient organizations, universities, scientific societies and foundations advocating for breakthrough medical research. "All Obama will need to do is simply rescind that with his presidential authority."
But there is another brake on federal funding the Obama administration will need to address. It's called the Dickey-Wicker amendment, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in 1995.
The amendment bars the use of federal funds for research in which embryos are destroyed, discarded or "knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for fetuses in utero."
That effectively eliminated federal funding for the creation of new cell lines, because the process ordinarily destroys the embryo.
"The Dickey-Wicker amendment has ... slowed the progress of the field for all these years," said Siegel, at the Genetics Policy Institute. Obama should seek its repeal, he said, but "we don't expect that to happen overnight. What we do expect very soon is an executive order lifting President Bush's restrictions."
The prospect of a less restrictive and bureaucratically tangled research environment has delighted Maryland researchers.
