The National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis S. Collins has announced that 13 additional human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines are now approved for federally funded research and will be included in the agency’s hESC cell registry.
The additional hESC lines include four lines from the WiCell Research Institute in Madison, WI. These lines were approved for NIH-funded research under the previous administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, but not included on the agency’s stem cell registry since it was created last year. Two of these four lines, H7 and H9, are widely used by stem cell researchers.
The list also includes lines from Stanford University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
With the recent additions, the registry now includes 64 cell lines available for federal funding. One hundred cell lines are still waiting for approval.
Collins told NIH News that the approval should be a “welcome reassurance to the many researchers who have been working on lines developed in the early days of stem cell research.” He added, “Scientists can continue their studies without interruption, and we can all be assured that valuable work will not be lost.”
The NIH hESC Stem Cell Registry was created by the agency in response to an executive order from President Barack Obama in March 2009. The executive order called for the federal government to fund responsible stem cell research, including research using hESCs that were ethically obtained.