Stem-cell researchers at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been left frustrated and confused following the demise of the agency’s Center for Regenerative Medicine (CRM). The intramural programme’s director, stem-cell biologist Mahendra Rao, left the NIH, in Bethesda, Maryland, on 28 March, and the centre’s website was taken down on 4 April. Although no official announcement had been made at the time Nature went to press, NIH officials say that they are rethinking how they will conduct in-house stem-cell research.
Researchers affiliated with the centre say that they have been left in the dark. When contacted by Nature on 7 April, George Daley, a stem-cell biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of the centre’s external advisory board, said that he had not yet been told of Rao’s departure or the centre’s closure.
Read the full, original story: NIH stem-cell programme closes
