For the fourth consecutive year, HSCI awarded seed grants to scientists throughout the Harvard community to provide critical early funding for stem cell research. In May, ten seed grants totaling nearly $2 million were awarded to investigators, selected from a pool of 64 applicants from HSCI-affiliated institutions.
This year’s grants will support stem cell research related to a variety of targeted disease areas such cancer, cardiovascular disease, kidney, nervous system disorders, skeletal disease, and bioengineering.
HSCI’s Seed Grant Program provides two years of funding for projects in areas of stem cell research that will advance HSCI’s mission. A multiinstitutional panel conducts a rigorous review process with the difficult task of selecting a set of the most promising projects from many superbly qualified applications. Highest priority is given to projects that are difficult to fund from other sources because they are early stage, high risk, or are ineligible for federal support because of restrictions on human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research. The grants are also intended to support junior faculty in the early stages of their independent careers but also support senior faculty entering brand new, otherwise unfunded, areas of research.
In 2007, the Millipore Foundation made a generous gift of $500,000 to the HSCI Seed Grant Program to support one recipient per year for the next five years. 2008 Seed Grant recipient Sangeeta Bhatia, MD, PhD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital has been named HSCI’s first Millipore Foundation Seed Grant Fellow.
2008 HSCI Seed Grant Recipients
Paola Arlotta, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital
Sangeeta Bhatia, MD, PhD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Caroline Burns, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital
Stephen Haggerty, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital
Xue Li, PhD, Children’s Hospital Boston
Judy Lieberman, PhD, Immune Disease Institute
William Pu, MD, Children’s Hospital Boston
Zhong Wang, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital
Rebecca Wingert, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital
Sean Wu, MD, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital