News & Views item - May 2010

 

 

Australian Government to Establish $21 million Stem Cell Research Fund. (May 31, 2010)

The Australian Government is to establish a stem cell research fund to boost research in the field. The Australian Research Council (ARC) will administer a $21 million Special Research Initiative in Stem Cell Science to help advance Australian research in the discipline.

 

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) will also invite applications for Centres for Research Excellence in Regenerative Medicine, in order to encourage research to be undertaken to develop clinical applications resulting from the research.

 

The ARC Special Research Initiative is open for proposals, and funding for up to seven years will commence in July 2011. In addition the NHMRC expects to seek proposals for Centres for Research Excellence, including those in regenerative medicine, beginning this July with five year funding to start in 2011.

 

While it may be a moot point as to the efficacy of whether earmarking research funding is the best sort of investment, it could also be argued that the $38.5 million being allocated by the government to blunt the attack by the mining industries and federal coalition on the proposed excess profits tax mightn't be better spent on stem cell research and its translation to the clinic.

 

Note added June 8, 2010: The Australian's Andrew Trounson reports that in fact: "Federal money for stem cell research will fall substantially when the Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC) shuts next year, scientists have warned, saying proposed new funding is only half what is now being delivered." The centre's funding agreement runs out in mid-2011, and the Rudd government has decided not to extend the funding. Instead Senator Carr made the announcement of $3 million a year in competitive funding for stem cell research for seven years.

 

An additional $2.5m over five years will come from the NHMRC to establish the new research centre referred to in the second paragraph of the report above.

 

ASCC chairman Professor Doug Macdonald noted the new money was about half the $8m a year ASCC would provide for research in its final two years, and while Monash University stem cell scientist Richard Boyd welcomed the funding announcement, he warned that the reduction would restrain researchers and tempt them to go offshore.