Seed Grants

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 fifth consecutive year, HSCI awarded seed grants to scientists throughout the Harvard community to provide critical early funding for stem cell research. In May, eight seed grants totaling nearly $1.5 million were awarded to investigators selected from a large pool of applicants across the HSCI-affiliated institutions.

This year's grants will support stem cell research in a variety of targeted disease areas such as cancer, liver disease, nervous system disorders, and obesity, as well as research in broadly applicable areas of stem cell biology such as DNA repair, embryonic stem cell differentiation, and bone formation. As HSCI continues its work to support and grow the clinician scientist community in stem cell research, we are pleased to announce that three of this year’s recipients are MD/PhD scientists.

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

2009 Seed Grant Recipients

Project Lead Affiliation Title
Wolfram Goessling, MD, PhD
Trista E. North, PhD
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Isolating novel regulators of liver regeneration through a chemical genetic modifier screen in zebrafish
Mark Damone Johnson, MD, PhD Brigham & Women's Hospital
Cancer Stem Cells in Meningiomas
David M. Langenau, PhD Massachusetts General Hospital
Imaging notch pathway requirements for symmetric vs. asymmetric self-renewal divisions in embryonal rhabdomy osarcoma
Sharad Ramanathan, PhD Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
Studying decision making in single embryonic stem cells
Yu Hua Tseng, PhD Joslin Diabetes Center
Identification and significance of brown fat progenitor cells
David Weinstock, MD Dana Farber Cancer Institute
DNA double-strand break repair in human pluripotent cells
Paul B. Yu, MD, PhD Massachusetts General Hospital
Identification of osteogenic progenitors in heterotopic ossification
Derrick J. Rossi, PhD Immune Disease Institute
In vivo reprogramming of lineage committed progenitor cells to hematopoietic stem cells