Medical research using embryos that contain both human and animal material was cleared to continue yesterday, after the High Court threw out a legal challenge by religious campaigners.

Mrs Justice Dobbs refused permission to two Christian groups to bring a judicial review over the fertility watchdog's decision to permit two teams of scientists to start such work and declared the application to be “totally without merit”.

The experiments with inter-species embryos, which involve inserting a human cell nucleus into an empty egg, are ultimately intended to create powerful laboratory models for investigating conditions such as diabetes, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease.

In January, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) awarded licences to groups at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and King's College London, and a third licence was awarded to a University of Warwick team in June.

Since these licences were granted, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act has been passed, explicitly making such experiments legal. The regulator's decision, however, was challenged by the Christian Legal Centre and Comment on Reproductive Ethics, which argued that the HFEA exceeded its remit under previous legislation by approving the work.

Mrs Justice Dobbs rejected this, saying that to overturn the licences would be “totally without merit and contrary to good administration”, and ordered the two groups to pay £20,000 costs.

Professor Stephen Minger, of King's, who holds one of the licences, welcomed the ruling. He said: “It is gratifying that Mrs Justice Dobbs recognised that the science behind the creation of hybrid embryos was always about creating unique cloned human cell lines that could accelerate the development of therapies for a number of important neurodegenerative conditions.”

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