U.S. researchers who want to work on new, unapproved human embryonic stem (ES) cell lines need not flee to privately funded labs, federal officials clarified last month. They can stay in their academic labs, as long as they follow existing accounting rules for what can and can't be charged to federal grants.
Last August, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began reviewing rules that ban mixing federal and private funds after President George W. Bush limited federal funding for ES cell research to 60-odd lines. In anticipation of Bush's decision, some stem cell researchers had moved their studies to special off-campus buildings. But after lengthy analysis, NIH says that's not necessary.
In a 29 March Web posting, NIH says that researchers can derive or use unapproved cell lines "in your university-supported laboratory" as long as they don't bill the federal government for the work and the university "has in place a method of separating" overhead costs. "Many people were nervous" about how to proceed, says stem cell researcher George Daley of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "This is reasonable and very helpful."
