For those keeping track, late yesterday NIH Director Francis Collins approved four more human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines for the embryonic stem cell registry.

The four newest approvals are sold by the company BioTime, Inc., which had two other hESC lines approved June 2, 2011. Details of the embryo destruction and hESC derivation (including from siblings) were published by ESI and Sydney IVF workers in 2007, around the time that ESI abandoned its schemes for therapies based on hESC. BioTime subsequenctly acquired ESI in 2010.

The total number of approved hESC lines is now 132, after a push of approvals earlier this year at NIH...