NIH Approves Stem Cell Lines

Eleven lines of human embryonic stem cells produced by the Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital Boston were approved for federal research funding by the National Institutes of Health last Wednesday.

The thirteen total lines approved by the NIH constitute the first batch of new stem cell sources authorized for funding since 2001, when former President George W. Bush prohibited the approval of new stem cell lines. Twenty-seven more lines developed at Harvard are slated for approval in the next few weeks.

Prior to the most recent group of approved stem cell lines, only 22 lines had been eligible for federal funding, according to Harvard Medical School associate professor George Q. Daley ’82, director of the Children’s Hospital lab that oversaw the development of the recently approved lines.

“The new policy gives us much more flexibility to do experiments that only our imagination can define,” Daley said.

In July, President Barack Obama reversed his predecessor’s restriction on the authorization of new stem cell lines, enabling the NIH to approve funding for the Children’s Hospital’s batch.

Obama established new guidelines for the ethics of stem cell research that require all cells to originate from embryos donated from in-vitro fertilization.

The NIH’s approval of the Harvard lines marks the entrance of stem cell research into the same processes of attaining funding as other areas of life science research, according to Daley.

Currently, 31 proposed grants—valued at a total of at least $21 million—that hope to use the new cell lines are ready for review, he added.

Harvard’s science spokesman B.D. Colen said that the approval of the new stem cell lines signals NIH’s openness to the development and funding of more research that involves the use of stem cells.

In addition, the availability of federal funding sources will permit researchers to work with new stem cell sources without relying on private funding, according to Colen.

“This will provide another avenue of funding and will bring more people and other institutions into the field,” Colen said. “That will be encouraging to some of the best young scientists who may have thought it was too risky to go into stem cell work.”

Daley said he was not surprised that the Harvard lines were part of the first group to receive approval for funding, since he and other faculty members in the Harvard Stem Cell Institute contributed to the drafting of the Obama administration’s guidelines regarding stem cell research.

The Office of Health Communication and Public Liaison at the NIH declined to comment on the Harvard lines because the 27 upcoming lines have not yet been approved.

—Staff writer Stephanie B. Garlock can be reached at sgarlock@college.harvard.edu.