President Obama is set to sign an executive order Monday reversing President Bush's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.
Stem-cell researchers and advocates are hailing this move as a huge step forward for stem-cell research.
Bush's executive order in 2001 allowed for continued research on 16 existing stem-cell lines, but according to UW-Madison professor of visual sciences Ronald Kalil, these lines were becoming genetically abnormal after dividing and renewing themselves for so long. By lifting the ban, Obama would allow federal funds to go toward deriving new embryonic lines.
Despite UW-Madison researcher James Thomson's recent breakthrough of inducing adult skin cells to become pluripotent stem cells, which can form into all types of cells, embryonic stem cells are still hailed as the ""gold standard"" of pluripotent cells, UW-Madison associate professor of medicine Tim Kamp said in an e-mail.
Kamp said the ban on federal funding has had a negative impact on the United States' progress in stem-cell research compared to other countries', but the United States has remained competitive because of its ""robust"" biomedical research infrastructure.
According to Kamp, UW-Madison, which has long been a leader in the field of stem-cell research, will benefit from this change in policy.
""Because most of the embryonic stem-cell research on campus is federally funded, the change in policy will help empower this research by allowing investigators access to a greater diversity of human [embryonic stem] cell lines to study,"" he said. ""It will expand and improve stem-cell researchers' toolkit.""
Raghu Vemuganti, UW-Madison assistant professor of neuroscience, said he believes lifting the restriction on funding will mean more stem cells will be available to the campus and more stem-cell projects will spring up.
Ed Fallone, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Wisconsin Stem Cell Now, said he is pleased with the policy change, but it is happening later than he hoped.
""The reason why Wisconsin Stem Cell Now was founded was on the principle that there should not be political or ideological litmus tests for medical research, and so I guess we feel vindicated that we now have an administration that agrees with us,"" he said.
Fallone said after the ban is lifted, the stem-cell debate will focus on inconsistent state stem-cell laws, funding levels from the National Institutes of Health, drug trials and medical tests.
