The University of California (UC) has requested permission from a US court to participate in a lawsuit that challenges the government’s right to fund research using human embryonic stem cells.
In a motion filed yesterday (PDF here) to the Washington DC Court of Appeals, lawyers for the state’s university system argue that UC has a major stake in the case. The UC system is the single largest recipient of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the interests of grantees are currently not represented, the motion states.
In a declaration submitted with the motion, UC vice president for research and graduate studies Steven Beckwith breaks out some of the losses faced by universities in the system should an injunction against federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research be upheld (the injunction has been temporarily stayed by the US Court of Appeals). The University of California, Los Angeles receives a total of 16 NIH grants from nine different NIH institutes involving work on human embryonic stem cells; those grants are worth a total of $8.7 million and provide full-time support for 46.5 researchers and staff. The University of California, San Diego, meanwhile, receives 14 NIH grants from five NIH institutes for human embryonic stem cell work, worth $7 million and employing 17.17 researchers and staff.
The disruptive impact of the injunction goes beyond stem cell researcher, the motion notes. A second declaration by Arnold Kriegstein, director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UC San Francisco, details its effect on an NIH training grant that supports 88 MD/PhD students. Some mentors listed on the grant work with human embryonic stem cells, though none receive federal funding for such work. Nonetheless, Kriegstein writes, the NIH has held up funding for the program, and similar actions threaten other student training programs. “The preliminary injunction thus threatens not only the vitality but the viability of this important program.”
UPDATE (21 Sept): In a document filed this afternoon, the court ordered both the plaintiffs and the defendants in the case to file responses to UC’s motion by noon on Thursday, 23 September.
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