April 20, 2025

California also turns towards reprogramming

Michael Cook

CIRM moves into pluripotent cells
The Harvard Stem Cell Institute is not the only research
centre to have changed its tune lately. A close examination of press releases
from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine reveals that the penny
has finally dropped on the Pacific side of the US as well.

Until August, all press releases from the CIRM described it
as “the largest source of funding for human embryonic stem cell research in the
world”. In January it scolded President Bush for not realising that “human
embryonic stem cells clearly remain the gold standard for research into
pluripotent cells". It firmly squelched hopes about reprogramming: “it
will not, for the foreseeable future, be suitable for clinical studies in human
because of safety concerns”.

In May it stated that it was funding new facilities to allow
human embryonic stem cell research “and other stem cell approaches”.

The latest press release, dated August 13, however, contains
a small but significant change in the CIRM’s self-description: “the largest
source of funding for embryonic and
pluripotent stem cell research in the world”. It appears that the CIRM’s
love affair with slow, inefficient, expensive, ethically fraught and legally
complex human embryonic stem cells may be drawing to a close. In the very near future the CIRM could be boasting that it is the “the largest
source of funding for pluripotent stem cell research in the world, as well as other stem cell approaches”.

However, a divorce is unlikely to hit the headlines. If the way
ahead is reprogrammed pluripotent cells, the CIRM – which will cost US$6
billion including interest — was created for nothing. The Federal government
would have funded the research anyway because there are no significant ethical
issues with reprogrammed cells. Californian taxpayers will have spent US$6 billion on a white elephant.
It’s not something that belongs at the top of a press release.

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One thought on “California also turns towards reprogramming”

  1. These changes, it seems to me, are a triumph for the Bush funding policy regarding ESCR. Nobody will ever give the president credit for anything, of course. But he said he believed that scientists could find ethical ways to obtain the benefits touted for ESCR and therapeutic cloning. His funding restrictions kept the ethical focus on the ethical importance of the embryo, and the attention of scientists on what came to be called “alternative methods.”

    But for Bush, I believe we would now be arguing over giving even more billions to scientists to pursue the complicated, difficult, and morally contentious area of human cloning research.

    This new field offers tremendous hope, and maybe someday when passions have cooled, President Bush will be given due credit for the small part he played in steering biotechnology in the right direction.

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