Tommy Thompson, the U.S. secretary of health and human services announced Friday in Fitchburg the first federal grants to embryonic stem cell research since President Bush delineated last August what entities would receive the funding.
Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, also announced during the conference two research agreements involving research in the area and stem-cell lines of which WARF holds the patents.
Four institutions, including WARF, will receive the federal funding that totals $3.5 million. Thompson said this money, approximately $800,000 of which WARF will receive, will improve the infrastructure of stem-cell research.
The other institutions receiving the grants were Cellsaurus, in Athens, Ga.; ES Cell International in Australia and Singapore; and the University of California at San Francisco.
The agreements announced by Gulbrandsen are among WARF, ES Cell International and UC-San Francisco. The agreements mark the first time WARF has made contracts with a commercial and educational institution respectively listed on the NIH Stem Cell Registry.
\It's WARF's goal to enable scientists' access to a wide variety of cells to move embryonic stem cell discovery forward as fast as possible,"" Gulbrandsen said. ""Only by increasing the number of scientists working in this field, will these researchers bring the tomorrow of medicine tomorrow closer to today.""
UW-Madison became the pioneer of human embryonic stem-cell research in 1998 when James Thomson, a UW-Madison professor, became the first to successfully isolate a human embryonic stem cell.
Some speculate that the research will lead to cures for illnesses such as Parkinson's disease.
