The purpose of HSCI Seed Grants is to provide early funding for innovative projects in any field of stem cell research. The awards put particular emphasis on projects that might be difficult to fund from other sources, either because a project is considered to be "high risk/high reward" or because the research is ineligible for federal funding under the current federal restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research. Seed grants are open to any investigator with a Harvard affiliation.

For the seventh consecutive year, HSCI awarded seed grants to scientists throughout the HSCI community to provide critical early funding for stem cell research. In 2011, 10 seed grants totaling $1.8 million were awarded to investigators selected from a large pool of applicants across HSCI-affiliated institutions.

This year’s grants will support stem cell research in a variety of targeted disease areas such as cancer, kidney and skeletal diseases.  The grants will also support research of broadly applicable areas of stem cell biology such as cell development, bio/tissue engineering and self-renewal.  This year, for the first time, applications were reviewed in Basic Research or Translational categories, and as a result we were able to fund a translational project focused on engineered fascia for stem cell therapy in hernia repair.

Click to view seed grant recipients from previous years: 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005

2011 Seed Grant Recipients