Trump, Fetal Tissue Restrictions and California's Stem Cell Agency

The $5.5 billion ballot proposal to save California's stem cell agency from financial extinction popped up this week in a discussion of the Trump administration's looming restrictions on the use of fetal tissue.  

The proposed ballot initiative surfaced in a lengthy piece in "The Scientist" magazine, which said, 

"The Trump administration’s changes to policy involving material donated from abortions have led scientists to adjust their research projects or seek alternative sources of funding."

The author of the article, Diana Kwon, interviewed researchers around the country, who spoke of how they were dealing with the new reality. One of them was Andrew McMahon of the University of Southern California, who was recruited to the Golden State with the help of a $5.5 million award from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), as the stem cell agency is known. 

Kwon said that McMahon "still has about a year left before he needs to apply for more funding, and he’s started looking into potential alternatives to NIH." 

She noted that the NIH restrictions are yet to be fleshed out and continued with comments from McMahon,

"'My understanding is that it’s not entirely clear at the moment what that process is going to be,' McMahon says. 'I’ve been using the time to obtain non-NIH funding to support aspects of the research that I would have tried to get NIH funding [for] in the future.'"

Also quoted was Larry Goldstein, director of the UC San Diego stem cell program. Kwon wrote, 

"In California, the state’s stem cell agency, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has provided funding for stem cell studies using fetal tissue since it was founded in 2004. That fund is about to run out, but (a proposed ballot initiative) that would provide $5.5 billion in funding to CIRM (is expected to) come before voters in November.

"'That will hopefully provide funding for areas of fetal tissue research that involves stem cells,' Goldstein says. 'But . . . it’s ridiculous to rely on one or two states to self-fund, because we don’t have all of the best and brightest [scientists], and it means lots of students and postdocs will train in areas where federal training support will be unavailable to them.'"