Endocrine Insider
April 1, 2010

(See Full Issue)

On February 23, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking public comment on a revision to the definition of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) in the “National Institutes of Health Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research” (Guidelines).  Developed in response to President Obama’s reversal of restrictions on stem cell research, the Guidelines previously defined hESC as being “.derived from the inner cell mass of blastocyst stage human embryos,” thereby inadvertently excluding hESCs derived from pre-blastocyst embryos.  To better adhere to the spirit of the original definition, NIH proposed to change the definition to state that hESC are “derived from early stage human embryos, up to and including the blastocyst stage….”  The Endocrine Society supported the change in written comments to the NIH.