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Print Edition StoriesThursday, December 3, 2009
NIH approves Children's Hospital Boston stem cell lines for research
By Eric Convey
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The National Institutes of Health Wednesday approved the use of 13 embryonic stem cell lines — including 11 lines developed by Children’s Hospital in Boston — for use in federally funded research.
The lines were approved under the recent Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research.
“These stem cell lines were derived from embryos that were donated under ethically sound informed consent processes,” Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of NIH, said in a prepared statement. “More lines are under review now, and we anticipate continuing to expand this list of responsibly derived lines eligible for NIH funding.”
See the new guidelines at NIH.
The NIH said in a news release that the research must be “ethically responsible, scientifically worthy and conducted in accordance with applicable law.”
Much of the work took place in the 30-person Children’s lab of Dr. George Daley.
“Today’s announcement opens the floodgates to use the vital resources of the NIH to move the science forward,” Daley said in an interview Wednesday night. “Now we can use the NIH dollars to support the critical medical resarch on these new lines.”
“Human stem cell lines cut across the whole swath of modern medical research,” he added.
The administration of former President George W. Bush had limited researchers using federal money to certain stem cell lines. President Barack Obama reversed that policy.
Daley said having new lines is important in a number of ways.
“First and foremost, there are more (lines),” he said. “Essentially, there are many human stem cell lines which are essentially generic, which these are, and allow you to ask generic questions. The even more important lines are the ones that are disease-specific, and those are in the pipelines....we could not study disease-specific lines.”
Approval of those lines could come within months, he said.
In a post on a Children’s Hospital blog, researcher M. William Lensch, who works in Daley’s lab, described exhileration upon hearing the NIH’s formal announcement.
Lensch writes: “Each cell line listed in the NIH Registry represents hundreds if not thousands of hours of work to establish, culture and validate before the first actual experiments could even begin. Now that these cell lines are eligible for funding through the NIH, we are able to apply for long awaited federal dollars to bolster the private contributions that have nurtured our work over the years. I’ve always thought of our research as taking up ‘lost causes’ of medicine; conditions where we simply don’t know enough to be able to offer a substantial therapy to patients and their families. We are talking about diseases so rare that the only time I ever meet anyone who has heard of one of them is because a family member or friend has it currently or, unfortunately, died from it.”
The announcement Wednesday in some ways capped a shift in federal policy that followed the end of the Bush administration.
Many opponents of the work are troubled that it involves the destruction of days-old human embryos. In response, backers of the research have generally argued that those embryos would only be disposed of if not used for science.
Daley said Wednesday night that the ethical debate that has surrounded stem cell research has been “healthy.”
“I have been very deeply involved in the ethical debate,” he said. “I think most people who think critically about the issue have come over to the side of endorsement and understanding that this is valuable medical research.”
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