A Wisconsin-based research group will run the nation’s first federally financed embryonic stem cell bank, the National Institutes of Health said this week. The WiCell Research Institute, a non-profit set up in 1999 to support stem cell research at the University of Wisconsin, will store and distribute the cells under a federal plan to reduce the cost of using them. In 2001, President Bush limited federal funding to projects involving 78 lines of embryonic stem cells that already were in existence. He said taxpayer dollars should not pay for the destruction of human embryos. That policy has stifled the field, some researchers say, and only 22 lines are now available for use.
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