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Nobody likes a busy signal. And for U.S. stem-cell researchers, none has been more frustrating than the one on the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry home page. That's where the government agency lists all of the embryonic-stem-cell lines that scientists are allowed to study using taxpayer dollars. For months, the page has been depressingly static. "None are available at this time," it read. "Please check back later...
That message changed Dec. 2 at 12:30 p.m. ET, when the government finally made available the first 13 stem-cell lines that researchers can study with federal funds. Researchers had been awaiting the announcement since March 9, when President Obama signed an Executive Order lifting the ban that former President George W. Bush had placed on government support of human-embryonic-stem-cell research. The previous Administration had restricted federally funded studies to only the dozen or so stem-cell lines that had been created before Aug. 9, 2001. The new policy allows scientists to experiment with any existing...
Already, the Federal Government has given out 31 grants totaling about $21 million for research involving the larger pool of human embryonic stem cells. But the recipients of that money have been waiting to use it since September, when the NIH, charged with establishing and applying the stem-cell vetting criteria, began reviewing potentially eligible cells. In addition to the 13 lines approved on Wednesday, another 96 lines are waiting for the green light, 20 of which may get it by Friday...
Progress will certainly accelerate as more stem-cell lines are added to the government registry. A larger pool of available stem cells is a more accurate reflection not only of the diversity of the population but also of the variety of forms that treatable diseases can take. That translates into more opportunities for researchers to study basic human development and disease development, screen new drugs for their effectiveness against disease and create entirely new therapies. The ultimate goal is to use stem cells, which can morph into any of the body's hundreds of different cell types, to cure disease...
...newly approved lines, 11 came from the lab of Dr. George Daley, director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Children's Hospital Boston and a member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute; the other two came from Dr. Ali Brivanlou, an embryologist at Rockefeller University. Daley's submission for NIH review was 130 pages long, he says, including a 16-page informed-consent document signed by each of the donors of the embryos from which the stem-cell lines were derived, ensuring that the donors were aware of where their embryos were going and what they would be used...