The UW Foundation's Waisman Center received a $400,000 matching grant funding research to find a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
'This [grant] is from a private donor,' said UW-Madison Anatomy Professor Clive Svendsen, whose neural stem-cell research lab would benefit from the grant. 'She wants to stimulate ALS research.'
Svendsen said his research differs from UW-Madison stem-cell researcher James Thomson's in that the cells Swendsen studies are taken from fetuses rather than embryos.
This distinction, Svendsen said, kept his research from falling under the rules set by President Bush's stem-cell research policy, set earlier this year. The cells he works with are taken from miscarried or aborted fetuses, avoiding the ethical question raised by destroying an embryo.
