Australian Stem Cell Centre Omitted from 2011-12 Federal Budget. (July 16, 2010)

Science's resident reporter in Melbourne, Elizabeth Finkel*, writes that the "death knell has rung for the Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC)" with the federal government's withdrawal of funding in the 2011-12 budget. To replace the $9.7 million currently allocated will be funding from the Australian Research Council ($2.6 million per annum for 7-years) and the National Health and Medical Research Council ($400,000, per annum for 5-years) for competitive grants.

Martin Pera, a former chief of embryonic stem cell research at ASCC who is now director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles told Dr Finkel: "Some really great research programs have emerged" from the ASCC. WEHI Director Douglas Hilton says: "We're not likely to get all the skills we need if half the people are disenfranchised," and Peter Gray, director of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland pointed out: "The ASCC brought engineers and biologists together."

Dr Finkel concludes: his (Peter Gray's) group teamed up with ASCC's Susie Nilsson and David Haylock, now at CSIRO, to create miniature stem cell bioreactors. This kind of collaboration, says Haylock, 'is the legacy of the ASCC.'"

The rationale given by the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Kim Carr, is that federal funding "was always intended to conclude in June 2011."

Even though in July 2009, ASCC released a new business plan with a more academic bent Dr Finkel reports: "The turnaround was not enough to repair ASCC's tarnished image in the government's eyes."

As demonstrated by the media release below, it's a simple matter of priorities.

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 *Elizabeth Finkel is a cofounder and contributing editor of Cosmos magazine. She holds a PhD in biochemistry and spent ten years as a professional research scientist before becoming an award-winning journalist. In 2005 her book Stem Cells: Controversy at the frontiers of Science won a Queensland Premier’s Literary award.