Cystic fibrosis fills childrenâ??s lungs with infections. Duchenne muscular dystrophy weakens, paralyzes and kills boys. Huntingtonâ??s disease robs middle-aged men and women of their minds. For a decade, Oleg Verlinsky and colleagues at Chicagoâ??s Regenerative Genetics Institute created human embryonic stem cells marked with these diseases and others â?? made from embryos donated by suffering families â?? hoping to combat these illnesses.On Thursday, A National Institutes of Health panel ruled one sentence of legal language in the consent form used by RGI meant these hundreds of cell “lines”, or colonies, shouldnâ??t receive federal research funding. “They will remain frozen, or discarded, forever,” Verlinsky says. “Without federal support, no one will use them for research.”
Office of Strategic Communication