Advanced Cell's Lanza gets NIH award

Advanced Cell Technology Inc. announced today that the company's chief scientific officer, Dr. Robert Lanza, and Kwang-Soo Kim of Harvard University and McLean Hospital, have won a $1.9 million National Institutes of Health Director's Opportunity Award for research in “Translating Basic Science Discoveries into New and Better Treatments” under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The NIH award provides McLean Hospital and ACT's joint venture with CHA Biotech, Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine International funding to explore the potential of protein-induced pluripotent stem cells as a source of universal red blood cells and platelets for transfusion. The limited supply of red blood cells and platelets is a serious medical issue that can have potentially life-threatening consequences, especially for patients who need multiple transfusions, ACT said in a statement.

Advanced Cell Technology Inc. is a biotechnology company working on medical treatments based on stem cells.