"The Bush ban has really, dramatically suppressed work with new [embryonic stem cell] lines," said Fishman, of the University of Maryland. The "overwhelming" majority of stem cell research at his institution "does not involve new lines of embryonic stem cells."
"This is something we've been interested in expanding with the help of Maryland's Stem Cell Initiative," he said, while also planning for the day when federal restrictions would be lifted.
If a major new NIH funding became available, he said, "you would probably see a lot of new investigators entering that field."
The prospect of new money and less red tape has delighted scientists at Hopkins, too, Dang said. "Some labs were celebrating after the election. ... People now won't be limited to 20 or so approved cell lines. They can write a grant proposal to do 50 cell lines rather than limit the science arbitrarily. People can be more creative, more adventurous to really design experiments the right way."
Hopkins' Institute for Cell Engineering - using state and private funds and anticipating that federal policies would change - has dedicated up to 40,000 square feet of lab space to accommodate added stem cell research, Dang said.
Almost as welcome is the prospect of tearing down the bureaucratic wall between cell lines derived before and after Bush's 2001 speech.
While Hopkins managed to keep federal and other research separated by restricting them to separate floors, other institutions have felt compelled to go further.
For example, to protect its NIH funding, the University of California-San Francisco spent $6 million several years ago to strip bare a perfectly good lab that had been built with federal funds and rebuild it with private dollars so it could be used for work with new cell lines not eligible for federal funding.
The Bush ban and the red tape that came with it "has made the whole field a little bit more nervous, and deterred some young researchers from getting into it because it was viewed as a risky career path," said Rick, of CAMR.
"We've had issues at Hopkins," Dang said. "We've lost investigators to California with their $3 billion [state] commitment to this effort."
Less experienced researchers "have been kind of lured away to Europe," he said.
An infusion of NIH dollars for work with new embryonic stem cell lines should also excite interest among private-sector labs seeking to collaborate with academic labs in the development of new therapeutic products, Fishman said.
"I think that will open the door for more of that collaboration," he said. "At least for the limited amount of NIH resources available, this research will be able to compete."
STATE'S STEM CELL RESEARCHERS TO PRESENT FINDINGS
More than 60 Maryland stem cell researchers will present their latest findings at a symposium Wednesday at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory near Laurel. The gathering is sponsored by the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission, formed to allocate state funding for research ineligible for federal dollars.
