LOS ANGELES — In a tacit acknowledgment that the promise of human embryonic stem cells is still far in the future, California’s stem cell research program on Wednesday awarded grants intended to develop therapies using mainly other, less controversial cells.

The $230 million in grants awarded Wednesday to California universities and companies represent a big step toward moving stem cells from basic research toward application in treating diseases like cancer and AIDS. Grant recipients are supposed to have a therapy ready for initial human testing in four years.

But only 4 of the 14 projects involve embryonic stem cells. The others will use so-called adult stem cells or conventional drugs intended to kill cancer stem cells, which are thought to give rise to tumors.

The grants thus represent a departure from the program’s original mission. California voters approved the 10-year, $3 billion effort in 2004 largely to get around restrictions on embryonic stem cell research imposed by the administration of President George W. Bush.

Such research is ethically controversial because creation of embryonic stem cells involves the destruction of human embryos. This year, the Obama administration relaxed the previous administration’s restrictions.

Leaders of the California program say that what voters really care about are treatments for diseases, not what cell type is used. They say that from the outset the program was not restricted to the embryonic cells.

The commitment to voters was to “pursue the very best cell type for each disease,” said Robert N. Klein, the chairman of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the agency that runs the program.

Still, the grant awards are likely to bolster one argument made by opponents of embryonic stem cell work: that such cells are not needed because treatments using adult cells are closer to fruition.

“This is the stuff that’s delivering for patients,” said David Prentice, senior fellow for life sciences at the Family Research Council, an organization opposed to abortion and embryonic stem cell research.

The California grants are “in a sense, not surprising,” Mr. Prentice said.

Embryonic stem cells can grow easily in culture and can turn into virtually any type of tissue in the body. The hope is that the cells might be turned into heart cells, brain cells or other types of cells to repair damaged and diseased organs.

But the embryonic stem cells themselves can grow into tumors in the body, so the cells have to be first turned into pure preparations of specific types of cells.

Adult stem cells can be obtained from the human body and turned into a more limited range of tissues. But adult stem cells have been the subject of research for a longer time and, in the form of bone marrow transplants, are already used to treat a variety of diseases.

One project financed Wednesday would involve retrieving cardiac stem cells from a patient’s heart. The cells would be multiplied in culture and then put back into the heart to try to repair damage from a heart attack.

Dr. Eduardo Marbán of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who will lead the project, said embryonic stem cells turn into immature heart cells that might not help an adult heart. “The last thing we want to do is grow rogue heart cells,” Dr. Marbán said.

Still, one project awarded financing would use embryonic stem cells to make insulin-producing islet cells that would be implanted in the body to treat Type 1 diabetes. The $20 million for the project went to Novocell, a San Diego biotechnology company, and the University of California, San Francisco.

Other projects involving embryonic stem cells are intended to treat stroke, Lou Gehrig’s disease and the eye disease called macular degeneration.

One project will use so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, which can be made from a patient’s own skin cells and have many of the properties of embryonic stem cells. Scientists at Stanford hope to harness those cells to treat a rare but debilitating skin disease called epidermolysis bullosa.

Two projects will essentially try to replicate the reported cure last year of a patient with AIDS. The patient, in Berlin, also had leukemia and got a bone marrow transplant to treat that disease. But the bone marrow donor had a genetic makeup making him naturally resistant to H.I.V.

For a given patient with AIDS it would be nearly impossible to find a donor that is both a good match and naturally resistant to H.I.V. infection. But the two research teams plan to take a patient’s blood-forming stem cells and inactivate a gene to make them resistant to H.I.V., then put them back in the body.

In addition to the $230 million being provided by California, the governments of Canada and Britain are together contributing $43 million because some of the research will be done in those countries.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company