Researchers urge NIH to allow funding for chimeric research

In a recent letter published in Science, researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine call for the NIH to remove their funding restrictions on chimeric research, or the implantation of human stem cells into nonhuman embryos.

“By eliminating federal funding for all aspects of this research, the NIH casts a shadow of negativity toward all experiments involving chimera studies regardless of whether human cells are involved. The current NIH restriction serves as a significant impediment to major scientific progress in the fields of stem cell and developmental biology and regenerative medicine and should be lifted as soon as possible,” letter co-author Sean Wu, PhD, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Stanford, said in a press release.

The NIH imposed funding restrictions on chimeric research last month, stating that any research ‘in which human pluripotent cells are introduced into a nonhuman vertebrate animal pre-gastrulation stage embryos’ will no longer receive funding while the agency considers policy changes to such research.

Wu and colleagues believe that chimeric research is imperative to helping researchers better understand early human development and disease, as well as advance medication testing to ensure safe and effective therapies.

The NIH is holding a workshop today to deliberate on updated research guidelines and the recent funding restrictions.

“Ultimately, we believe that human/nonhuman chimerism studies in pregastrulation embryos hold tremendous potential to improve our understanding of early development, enhance disease modeling and promote therapeutic discovery,” Wu and colleagues concluded.