Harvard, along with two other academic institutions, will take the lead in moving basic stem cell science towards clinical applications after receiving an $11.4 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) last week.

The NHLBI, one of the institutes comprising the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will finance the establishment of specialized centers for the research and development of cell-based therapies for heart, lung, and blood diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Baylor College of Medicine, and Johns Hopkins University.

Harvard is eligible to receive federal funding for this research because it will be conducted on human adult stem cells, for which government funding is not restricted, as opposed to human embryonic stem cells.

According to David T. Scadden, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) and director of the new MGH Center for Regenerative Medicine housing the NHLBI project, the grant money—spread over five years—will help provide supplies, infrastructure, and salaries for scientists and staff.

“Typically, grants are given to individual scientists,” he said. “This is a grant aimed at building a bridge between basic research and clinical applications: from those who are working with cells, to those who are testing in mouse models, to those who will be testing in people.”

The new center will collaborate fully with the HSCI, now in its second year of operation. This will be the first time a physical space has been allotted to the HSCI, which is currently a virtual organization comprised of Harvard scientists spread over many affiliated teaching hospitals and centers.

Harvard’s move towards researching therapeutic applications will begin with hematopoietic stem cells—adult stem cells that give rise to blood cells. Unlike human embryonic stem cells, which are less well understood and have been the subject of ongoing ethical and legal debates, adult stem cells have already proven to be an effective treatment option.

“Right now, the one setting in which stem cells are being used clinically is with blood stem cells, and so the first proof of principle studies will be with these stem cells,” said Scadden. “That science, which is now decades in progress, is still fairly limited. There are certain areas of it that continue to have promise in people with terminal diseases.”

Scadden stressed that the therapeutic direction in which work with adult stem cells is now moving will help lay the groundwork for a similar transition with embryonic stem cells.

“The lead time for [embryonic stem cell clinical therapies] happening will be years,” he said. “What we are doing is putting forth an infrastructure with an adult stem cell focus—but one that can be ultimately adapted to embryonic stem cell work.”

Scadden said the support of the HSCI and its affiliated institutions was indispensable to gaining the support of the NIH, an organization that traditionally funds projects which have already demonstrated promise.

“In some ways, this is a critical piece of information that’s very poorly understood by the public. The NIH often only funds something that already has momentum,” Scadden said. “It’s the collective effort by institutions such as the HSCI and MGH at the beginning which allows us to be competitive through the NIH. We now have the ability to use NIH money to continue forward.”

Under current federal guidelines, only human embryonic stem cell lines created before August 2001 may receive federal support, such as funding through NIH.

“We hope that there will be some thawing of these restrictions,” said Scadden. “If not, then we will find other funding.”

Last year, the HSCI awarded its own series of 12 $150,000 grants to fund stem cell research within the Harvard community not supported by the federal government.

—Staff writer Risheng Xu can be reached at xu4@fas.harvard.edu.