Funding News - Applications for Novel Approaches to Enhance Animal Stem Cell Research Sought

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) invites grant applications for novel approaches to enhance animal stem cell research. This announcement is made together with 11 other components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).*

Stem cells are valuable research models for studying biological and disease processes, and for creating disease models. These cells also hold promise as model systems for developing therapeutics and replacement tissues through understanding of control of cellular differentiation. Thus far, embryonic stem cells have been isolated from some biomedically important nonhuman research models. In addition, stem cells with a more restricted potential have been characterized from post-embryonic tissue types. However, research is needed to provide a full array of totipotent and multipotent stem cells from nonhuman biomedical research animal models, as well as to provide the research tools to identify, characterize, and purify those cells.

Areas of potential research interest include studies to: expand the number of nonhuman animal model systems in which embryonic stem cells are available; identify, isolate, culture, and characterize multipotent stem cell populations derived from nonhuman embryonic stem cells and from post-fetal tissue types; generate and use panels of markers for stem cell attributes common across species for use in characterization and isolation of stem cells in a range of animal species or tissues; and create universal methods of culture to maintain the undifferentiated state of embryonic or other characterized, multipotential stem cells across nonhuman animal species.

For more information, potential applicants should contact Dr. Arlene Chiu, Program Director, Repair and Plasticity Cluster, NINDS, Neuroscience Center, 6001 Executive Boulevard, Room 2206, Bethesda, MD 20892; telephone: 301-496-1447; fax: 301-480-1080; e-mail: chiua@ninds.nih.gov.

*For a full listing of supporting NIH components and a more detailed description of this program announcement, please visit the NIH web site at: http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-02-147.html.