“Our position is clear: we believe that stem cell research—including embryonic stem cell research and somatic cell nuclear transfer—holds great promise for treating serious illnesses and should be conducted at Harvard,” says University Provost Steven E. Hyman.

Yet as the policy battles continue, the year-old HSCI has become a hub for scientists across Harvard.

It boasts 659 members—not all of whom are scientists, but who are interested in either the research or its societal implications and bioethics—and a core group of about 50 to 100 conducting research in the field.

“What you need to turn research into clinical application is talented people, and we have that in unparalleled numbers,” says Charles Jennings, executive director of the HSCI. “Our first challenge in creating this intellectual community is to get them talking to each other.”

To do this, the HSCI holds symposia where researchers discuss their projects and “promote interactions between scientists in different subject areas,” according to Jennings.

HSCI researchers can receive three types of funding—seed grants, core grants, and program grants.

The program grants will allocate money to developing cures in distinct disease areas, and Jennings says that working groups and plans for these disease areas will be finalized this fall.

Seed grants support individual projects. Twelve researchers across the University have been awarded these grants—five of which involved embryonic stem cell research, while the others worked with adult stem cells or partially differentiated progenitor cells.

“We tended to focus on young researchers, particularly those engaging in new research,” says Jennings. “The NIH is pretty conservative in funding new projects.”

For researchers such as Mathew W. Lensch, a stem cell research fellow at Children’s Hospital, the HSCI grant will be the predominant source of funding.

“This grant directly affects my ability to do research for the next two years,” Lensch explains. “I’m just one guy working on one project. This money allows me to be funded independently from federal sources.”

Yet the use of private funding can put tight limitations on researchers.

For example, core facilities, which are usually funded by NIH grants, contain shared equipment—tools which many researchers need to use but are too expensive for any one person to purchase.

Yet the researchers who are privately funded cannot use the equipment purchased by federal funds, meaning that expensive items such as cell sorters need to be purchased privately as well.

HSCI’s core grants are intended to cover the cost of buying and maintaining this equipment—but the division between researchers will remain.