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NIGMS Funds New Stem Cell Centers

Brief Description:
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences has announced funding for three new "Exploratory Centers for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research".

Transcript:
Schmalfeldt: You've heard a lot about the potential of human embryonic stem cells, the properties of which make them uniquely valuable for studying virtually any cellular process. Yet despite their promise for research and therapeutic purposes, stem cells are difficult to grow in the lab, and scientists don't yet know how to reliably direct them into becoming a specific type of cell. Now, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences has funded three new Exploratory Centers for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Doctor Marion Zatz is the program director for these grants. She talked about what scientists hope to achieve in these newly-funded centers.

Zatz: To learn a whole lot more about how you maintain these stem cell lines in culture, how you maintain them in their potential and differentiated state, and how you can drive them to differentiate in a variety of directions. And all of this knowledge is very primitive right now.

Schmalfeldt: The centers, two in New York and one in California, will establish core facilities to support and train scientists, and to define the growth conditions and molecular characteristics required for maintaining human embryonic stem cells in an undifferentiated state.

Zatz: Our hope was that we would engage the kind of basic scientists that NIGMS in general supports, and to begin to identify the characteristics of these cells that make them unique.

Schmalfeldt: Each center will receive an estimated $3-million over three years. They'll join three other centers the institute established in 2003. All of these centers will use only federally-approved stem cell lines listed on the NIH Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry. From the National Institutes of Health, I'm Bill Schmalfeldt in Bethesda, Maryland.

This page was last reviewed on September 30, 2005 .

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