President Obamaâ??s stem cell policy, announced a year ago this month, opened up federal funding for more stem cell lines created from human embryos. But now, scientists are facing a bitter irony – a few popular stem cell lines that could be studied with federal money under President Bush are suddenly off-limits.
Noted: WiCell Research Institute is a private nonprofit group linked to stem cell science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Its executive director, Erik Forsberg, says the only Bush-era line on the new registry, H1, is one of their lines. This popular cell line was made with an embryo from the University of Wisconsin, making it relatively easy to get documents for a new NIH application.