Healthbuzz

NIH seeks to expand the definition of ‘human embryonic stem cell’

by LaVonne on 19/02/10 at 6:10 pm

The National Institutes of Health is proposing a small change to the definition of “human embryonic stem cell” that could have a big effect on their long-term ability to lead to cures for a variety of diseases.

President Obama asked the NIH to come up with new guidelines for funding human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, and those guidelines define the cells as ones that

“are derived from the inner cell mass of blastocyst stage human embryos, are capable of dividing without differentiating for a prolonged period in culture, and are known to develop into cells and tissues of the three primary germ layers.”

In plain English, that means that the cells come from embryos that are